{"instructions": ["Please summarize these news articles."], "outputs": ["\u2013 Why did Microsoft buy Nokia's phone business? We now know Microsoft's answer: The computing giant released a 30-slide presentation today arguing that the move will improve Microsoft's margins on Windows phones, which will allow it to invest more in the platform, which will accelerate sales and market share growth, the Washington Post reports. But John Herrman at Buzzfeed has another explanation: \"Fear of dying alone.\" Here's what he and other pundits are saying: The presentation \"manages to sound both insane and uninspiring, outlining modest goals that still sound unrealistic,\" Herman argues\u2014like capturing a whole 15% of the smartphone market. \"It's a fitting end for the close of Microsoft's Ballmer era, during which the company \u2026 missed out on the most important change in consumer electronics in decades\" while remaining profitable in unglamorous ways. Like everyone, Microsoft is trying to ape the Apple model, MobileOpportunity observes. But it's not so sure that's a good idea. \"There already is an apple,\" the blog points out, and other software/hardware hybrid companies, like Palm and BlackBerry, have been crushed under its heel. Maybe Microsoft should have tried to patch up its tried-and-true strategy of licensing its OS. The move risks complicating Microsoft's crucial relationships with other PC and device manufacturers, one analyst tells ZDNet. But he adds that \"Microsoft needed to make a bold move\" or face \"certain terminal decline,\" and that the price it paid for Nokia \"seems extremely reasonable.\" Meanwhile, Matthew Yglesias at Slate digs up a fairly interesting memo from Nokia CEO (and, perhaps, Microsoft heir apparent) Stephen Elop, in which he uses the story of a Deepwater Horizon worker leaping from the burning oil platform\u2014a seemingly desperate, yet necessary move\u2014to explain the company's shift from its own failed OS to Windows Phone. Of course, Yglesias notes, that move \"was basically a total failure.\" To read the full parable, click here."], "input": "The seed for this crawl was a list of every host in the Wayback Machine This crawl was run at a level 1 (URLs including their embeds, plus the URLs of all outbound links including their embeds) The WARC files associated with this crawl are not currently available to the general public. Summary: Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia is aimed at building a devices and services strategy, but the joint company won't take the same form as Apple. Microsoft has been working on its evolution into a devices and services company, away from the services business it has traditionally been, for several years now with limited success. Its acquisition of most of Nokia is the latest acceleration of that strategy \u2014 to move further away from the moribund world of the beige desktop and towards the sunlit world of smartphones and tablets. Owning the desktop (via Windows) and building additional services on top, like Office or search, has been vital for Microsoft's strategy until now, so as our interest shifts from the desktop to the tablet or smartphone it's essential to Microsoft's broader business (even Azure) that it can retain that connection in some form. To be a winner in the business market it also has to be a winner in the consumer market, something that wasn't the case a decade ago. As Microsoft's own presentation about the deal, announced on Monday, notes: \"With the consumerisation of IT user matter at both home and work... We cannot risk having Apple or Google foreclose app innovation, integration, distribution or economics.\" Nokia lashed itself to Microsoft's mast after losing out to iOS and Android in the smartphone market share stakes and with the limited success of the Lumia range so far enough to keep interest in Windows Phone alive, most analysts are seeing a certain amount of inevitability to the acquisition, even if they are split on what its biggest implications are. Forrester mobile analyst Charles Golvin said the steadily diminishing investments by other Windows Phone licensees has left Microsoft with just Nokia as its standard bearer and added Microsoft now appears \"poised to adopt a vertically integrated strategy more akin to Apple's\". But he said Microsoft's challenge remains how to unite the myriad services and brands \u2014 Windows, Nokia, Live, Surface, Xbox, Bing and more \u2014 into a cohesive experience that will command and cement customer loyalty. \"That's a tall order and one that should weigh strongly on the board's choice of a new CEO,\" he said. Richard Holway, chairman of analyst TechMarketView, said given that Microsoft paid $8.5bn for Skype in 2011, the price it is paying for Nokia \"seems extremely reasonable\". However, he added: \"Our only 'surprise' now is the timing of the announcement. For such a big deal to come just days after Ballmer stood down seems mighty strange.\" For Holway, there is also an opportunity for the enlarged Microsoft to step up its business mobility efforts: \"There is undoubtedly a market opportunity for the creation of a provider of mobile solutions for the enterprise. Taking Office onto various mobile platforms. Providing secure emailing in a sector once occupied by BlackBerry.\" But such a move carries its own risks \u2014 Microsoft's success has been build on being hardware agnostic and persuading device manufacturers to support it. Already its move into the tablet market with Surface will have unsettled its manufacturers which have struggled to come up with convincing form factors to tackle the decline of the PC. If Nokia's rumoured tablet appears too, this will further complicate Microsoft's relations with these partners who are essential for the success of Windows 8 (as well as Office and other products). But, as Holway points out, \"on balance, Microsoft needed to make a bold move into mobile. Not doing so would mean certain terminal decline. This way at least holds out some chance of survival.\" Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at analyst Gartner, said by buying rather than just partnering with Nokia, Microsoft gets deeper integration, the benefit of its patents and removes any risk of Nokia either going Android or being acquired by someone else. But success against iOS and Android will depend on how the companies integrate. \"Nokia benefits from higher R&D spend as well as more marketing budget. Microsoft benefits from a good relationship with carriers, good direct channel presence in emerging markets, the potential of going after more aggressively to the business market,\" she told ZDNet. But for Milanesi, business is a secondary concern, even if it is an attractive target where Microsoft, and to a less extent Nokia, have experience: \"First and foremost it needs to be about consumers. Enterprise are certainly a target especially considering the state BlackBerry is in but consumers make or break a phone vendor today.\" From Milanesi's point of view, emerging markets need to be a longer term target for Microsoft \u2014 but the battle needs to be won in the mature markets first. For Forrester principal analyst Thomas Husson, Nokia adds to Microsoft's developing market strategy. It's looking increasingly likely that the US and western European smartphone market is reaching saturation, so that most growth will come from emerging markets. Here Nokia's Asha devices could play a neat role as an 'on-ramp' for consumers buying their first smartphone. Tied in with a revamped tablet strategy this could open up a new front against Android in particular. But Husson cautioned: \"This is going to be a long journey. In some countries, Windows Phone 8 market share is now above five percent and close to 10 percent. It thus still offers a limited reach for developers and marketers. \"Nokia is indeed still massivley popular in some emerging countries but competition is very high with Far East manufacturers and low-cost Android devices. I think it will depend on Microsoft's new strategy for emerging markets beyond just mobile phones.\" All of this shows the number of competing \u2014 and occasionally contradictory \u2014 demands upon Microsoft's management. As the incumbent player in a fading market, Microsoft has a take into account those differing requirements as it tries to build for the future. For example, balancing Microsoft's business customers against the need to get into consumer tech, the need to build its own hardware business against the need to keep manufacturers onside, and building up a mobile business while protecting its PC heritage. It's easy to look at Apple's integrated hardware and software model and the rich ecosystem that sits around it, but it's much harder to emulate. Global coverage: Nokia Interim CEO: Microsoft deal makes us stronger | Even with Nokia devices, Microsoft wants to license Windows Phone to other makers | Does its Nokia buy thwart or fuel a possible Microsoft break-up? | Microsoft shows how to flush decades of Nokia goodwill away | Microsoft gets less than $10 per Windows Phone unit | Microsoft-Nokia deal: Reaction from the Twitter trenches | Elop drops Nokia CEO role to lead devices team under Microsoft deal Further reading Microsoft is buying Nokia's cell phone business and licensing its patent portfolio, according to both companies. In 2003, Nokia's cell phone market share exceeded 35%. That same year, its phone business alone posted an operating profit of 5.48 billion euros. Today's sale price, which includes 1.65 billion euros in patents, is just 5.44 billion euros. It's been a rough decade. Nokia's cell phone collapse has been a spectacular one. The Finnish giant dominated the dumbphone era after Motorola, another faded star that recently fell into the hands of a comparative upstart. But it was blindsided by Apple, then deprived of a chance to regain its footing by an even more aggressive Google, which followed close behind. The story, in hindsight, is simple: Nokia did not have a truly compelling smartphone ready when a large segment of the developed world was first compelled by smartphones. Whether this was the result of complacency \u2014 Nokia was, in the mid-2000s, the leader of the niche smartphone category \u2014 doesn't matter now. Nokia's miscalculations became impossible to ignore in 2008, the same year Microsoft decided, internally at least, to scrap its ancient and inadequate Windows Mobile platform in favor of something entirely new. Under these circumstances, it's easy to imagine how a sort of camaraderie might have emerged at the time, or at least a mutual sympathy. Certainly a shared interest: to break back into the market from which they had been unceremoniously expelled. During the next two years, while Microsoft readied Windows Phone 7 and Nokia floundered on, the seeds of Sunday's deal were sewn. A chastened Nokia was a natural partner for the tardy but determined Microsoft; it needed a software solution and Microsoft needed help with hardware. The 2009 vision of 2013 renders clearly: Two giants, united after some missteps, regain their rightful place. By 2010, when the head of Microsoft's Business division left to take the helm at Nokia, the gears were moving. Many at the time wondered if Stephen Elop's time at Nokia would be spent grooming the company for purchase \u2014 a foreigner in all possible ways, he began his time at the company with a memo rightly but offensively declaring Nokia's proud platform a failure, and quickly pledged the company's commitment to the still-tiny Windows Phone. It felt like a radical about-face, but no matter: Nokia and Microsoft were going to save each other. Now, with Elop returning to Microsoft after a job well done \u2014 well, a job, done \u2014that plan has come to fruition. The only problem is that there's little left to save. Windows Phone has barely dented the now much larger smartphone market. Nokia hasn't had a Windows Phone hit. This incongruity \u2014 between a successfully executed, slyly strategic long-term merger plan and a much grander, more general sense of failure \u2014 might explain Microsoft's deeply strange and somewhat sad stated goals for its Nokia acquisition. Microsoft' s \"Strategic Rationale,\" titled \"Accelerating Growth,\" is a disjointed and bizarre document. It manages to sound both insane and uninspiring, outlining modest goals that still sound unrealistic. For example, it lays out a plan to pull in over $45 billion dollars in smartphone revenue by 2018. But it plans on doing this by securing just 15% of the projected global smartphone market \u2014 not exactly a world-beating plan, keeping in mind the time frame. Consider: 2018 is five years away. Five years ago was the year the App Store first opened. Hello there, There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform's edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters. As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a \"burning platform,\" and he needed to make a choice. He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times - his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a \"burning platform\" caused a radical change in his behaviour. We too, are standing on a \"burning platform,\" and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour. Over the past few months, I've shared with you what I've heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I'm going to share what I've learned and what I have come to believe. I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform. And, we have more than one explosion - we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us. For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem. In 2008, Apple's market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range. And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under \u20ac100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry's innovation to its core. Let's not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally - taking share from us in emerging markets. While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind. The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable. We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market. At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead. At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, \"the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.\" They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us. And the truly perplexing aspect is that we're not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis. The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we're going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem. This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we've lost market share, we've lost mind share and we've lost time. On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody's took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness. Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It's also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on. How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved? This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven't been delivering innovation fast enough. We're not collaborating internally. Nokia, our platform is burning. We are working on a path forward -- a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future. The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same. Stephen.", "source": "news_summ", "evaluation": "rouge"}
{"instructions": ["Please summarize these news articles."], "outputs": ["\u2013 The Supreme Court is facing a docket of high-profile political cases that will test whether recent liberal victories were more fluke or firm conviction, the New York Times reports. The court\u2014which is divided 5-4 for conservatives, but saw Justice Roberts vote liberal on Obamacare and same-sex marriage\u2014will look at cases including unions, affirmative action, and possibly abortion. A primer: Unions: Since 1977, unions have been allowed to charge non-union workers for dues that go to collective bargaining efforts, but not political ones. Now California teachers have brought a case saying collective bargaining is itself political. \"It could set the stage for a Citizens United-style reconsideration in the area of union dues,\" a lawyer says. Affirmative Action: Abigail Fisher says that being white played a role in the University of Texas denying her admission back in 2008. The Supreme Court punted on her case in 2013, and now it's back on the docket. Like the unions case, this was brought by a conservative group that recruited the plaintiffs. The death penalty: Justices will decide on capital-punishment cases in Pennsylvania, Kansas, Georgia, and Florida, the Wall Street Journal reports. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer have already expressed doubts about whether capital punishment is constitutional. \"One person, one vote\": Should state legislative districts be drawn based on their number of people or eligible voters? If justices choose the latter\u2014leaving out immigrants and children\u2014Latinos could lose political clout and rural areas will gain, Politico reports. Abortion: Justices may opt to revisit a Texas law that could reduce the state's abortion clinics from more than 40 to roughly 10. At issue is whether new clinic requirements are an \"undue burden\" on women's right to an abortion. One commentator believes this Supreme Court session will be ugly for liberals."], "input": "After a year in which liberals scored impressive, high-profile Supreme Court victories, conservatives could be in line for wins on some of this term's most contentious issues, as the justices consider cases that could gut public sector labor unions and roll back affirmative action at state universities. However, as the court's new term kicks off Monday, uncertainty surrounds several other politically potent cases that could wind up on the court\u2019s agenda. Story Continued Below Litigation over state efforts to limit abortion by regulating clinics and doctors is making its way to the high court. And the justices are already facing a batch of petitions involving the rights of religious institutions to opt out of providing contraception under Obamacare. Both issues seem likely to land on this term's docket, although the justices haven\u2019t formally taken up either. Many in the Obama administration would also like to see the court weigh in on immigration in coming months, upholding the president\u2019s right to grant quasi-legal status and work permits to millions of immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally as children. But it\u2019s unclear whether that fight will get to the justices in time for a decision this term or whether Obama\u2019s effort to expand his executive actions on immigration will remain blocked by a lower court order until the president leaves office. Here\u2019s POLITICO\u2019s look at five of the most important cases the justices could grapple with soon: A potential body blow to labor Public-employee unions and politicians of both parties are keenly focused on a California dispute about whether states can compel government employees to pay union dues. A loss for the unions could sharply diminish the clout of a movement already struggling with its political relevance. The case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, was brought by Orange County, Calif. schoolteacher Rebecca Friedrichs and other teachers, who are arguing that forcing them to pay union dues violates their First Amendment rights. They also contend that unions should have to get permission before collecting dues used for political purposes, as opposed to the current system that requires objecting employees to opt out. \u201cThe significance is substantial, either way it comes out,\u201d said University of California at Irvine Law Professor Catherine Fisk. \u201cThe reason why conservative lawyers are bringing these case is the hope that a significant number of government employees choose not to join the union and certain government employee unions will be weaker.\u201d The Roberts court has not been friendly to unions, issuing a 5-4 ruling last year that prohibited mandatory union fees for home health workers but stopped short of banning so-called \u201cagency shops\u201d in government. The new case directly asks the justices to overturn a 38-year-old precedent that allows all workers covered by union negotiations to be charged for representation. How the case will be resolved is unclear, partly because the conservative justices often see limits on government employee\u2019s First Amendment rights when their speech is at issue. Fisk said the unions are \u201crationally fearful\u201d about what the court will do, but she thinks the justices might end up dumping the case after it\u2019s heard. \u201cI think the case raises so many doctrinal problems for them,\u201d she said. Higher ed affirmative action back in the crosshairs Two years after punting the case back to an appeals court, the justices will take a second crack at resolving a dispute about the constitutionality of the University of Texas at Austin's affirmative action program. The case was brought by rejected applicant Abigail Fisher, who contends she was rejected because of her race. The last time Fisher\u2019s case went before the high court, affirmative action opponents hoped it would serve as a vehicle to pare back preferences for racial and ethnic groups at government-run schools. However, the justices instead told the 5th Circuit it had been too deferential to the University of Texas\u2019s claims that the programs were narrowly tailored to promote diversity. Justice Anthony Kennedy won the support of six other justices for a decision that said such programs must be handled with \"strict scrutiny,\u201d but the decision did not suggest they were automatically unconstitutional. Justice Elena Kagan has recused herself because she was involved in the case during her previous service as solicitor general. The real question is whether Kennedy will join the four other Republican appointees in setting such a high bar for affirmative action that many public colleges will abandon the preferences and admissions practices they use to achieve racial and ethnic diversity. The meaning of \"one person, one vote\u2019 A Texas case has the potential to deal a blow to Latino political clout, tilting the balance of power away from urban areas and towards suburban and rural areas with more white voters. Evenwel v. Abbott presents the question of whether state legislative districts can be apportioned using a count of eligible voters rather than a count of all people. If immigrants (both illegal and legal) as well as children can be left out of the count, \u201cthe rural areas where voters tend to have fewer non-citizens or where there are fewer young people concentrated would necessarily gain,\u201d said New York University Law Professor Rick Pildes. \u201cIt\u2019s a reasonable inference if the urban areas are more Democratic leaning that they would lose power to more Republican rural areas.\u201d Congressional redistricting shouldn\u2019t be directly affected by the case, Pildes said, because the Constitution says the U.S. census used for that reapportionment should be based on each state's population. But others say the ruling could spill over into Congressional redistricting down the line. Religious nonprofits and Obamacare In the Hobby Lobby case last year, the justices allowed for-profit companies to seek religious exemptions from Obamacare\u2019s coverage requirements. But now, several religious-affiliated schools and institutions \u2013including the Little Sisters of the Poor nursing home in Denver \u2013 have filed lawsuits, too. They argue that the administration\u2019s process for allowing religious nonprofits to opt out of the contraception requirement requires them to violate their religious beliefs. The Supreme Court has eight petitions \u2013 including one that just arrived from the federal government \u2014 on this issue. Some prominent judges are effectively begging the Supreme Court to jump in by lamenting the refusal of some courts to protect the largely-Catholic religious entities from sanctions for failing to fill out paperwork that triggers the contraception exemption but also sets in motion coverage from others. \u201cHow ironic that this most consequential claim of religious free exercise, with literally millions of dollars in fines and immortal souls on the line, should be denied when nearly every other individual religious freedom claim has been upheld by this court,\u201d 5th Circuit Judge Edith Jones complained in a dissent last week. \u201cHow tragic to see the humiliation of sincere religious practitioners, which, coming from the federal government and its courts, implicitly denigrates the orthodoxy to which their lives bear testament. And both ironic and tragic is the harm to the Judeo-Christian heritage whose practitioners brought religious toleration to full fruition in this nation. Undermine this heritage, as our founders knew, and the props of morality and civic virtue will be destroyed.\u201d The justices haven\u2019t signaled which of the challenges, if any, they\u2019ll consider but are expected to do so in the coming weeks. Testing when abortion clinic regulations go too far Two of the latest tactics in the abortion wars could wind up before the justices this term: requirements that doctors performing abortions have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and that abortion clinics meet standards for hospitals or surgical centers. An appeals court has upheld most such limits in Texas, but in June the Supreme Court voted, 5-4, to block key parts of the law until the justices decide whether to weigh in. Petitions to take up that case and a similar law in Mississippi are already pending at the Supreme Court. Supporters of the laws say they are designed to protect women's health, but abortion providers and abortion rights advocates say the laws would force many clinics to close and penalize poor women who could not afford travel to distant clinics. A similar Wisconsin law led to combative oral arguments in front of the 7th Circuit last week. Judge Richard Posner suggested the law was a transparent effort to prevent abortions, not aid women. \u201cGovernor Walker, before he withdrew from the presidential competition, said he thought abortion should be forbidden even if the mother dies as a result, \" Judge Richard Posner said to a lawyer for the state, in remarks first reported by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. \"Is that kind of official Wisconsin policy?\" \u201cThat perhaps is Governor Walker\u2019s personal view, but it\u2019s not a state policy,\u201d Assistant Attorney General Brian Keenan replied. Keenan insisted requiring doctors to have admitting privileges was a reasonable precaution to aid women. \u201cThe admitting privileges would benefit the continuity of care for the woman when she goes to that hospital,\u201d he said. Posner said the fact that the law was intended to kick in one business day after it was passed made clear the authors' intentions. \u201cThat statute can\u2019t be justified in terms of women\u2019s health,\u201d the judge said. Jennifer Haberkorn contributed to this report. The new term\u2019s biggest rulings will land in June, as the 2016 presidential campaign enters its final stretch, and they will help shape the political debate. \u201cConstitutional law and politics are certainly not the same thing, but they are interrelated, never more so than in a presidential election year that will likely determine who gets to appoint the next justice or two or three,\u201d said Vikram D. Amar, dean of the University of Illinois College of Law. By the time the next president is inaugurated, Justice Stephen G. Breyer will be 78, Justices Scalia and Kennedy will be 80, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be 83. \u201cThis coming term will again put into focus that the court is divided along partisan lines and that the 2016 presidential elections will be hugely consequential in shaping constitutional and other law for perhaps a generation or more,\u201d said Neal E. Devins, a law professor at William & Mary. The current court is the first in history split along partisan lines, where the party of the president who appointed each justice is a reliable predictor of judicial ideology. Put another way, all five Republican appointees are to the right of all four Democratic appointees. It was not long ago that Republican appointees like Justices John Paul Stevens and David H. Souter routinely voted with the court\u2019s liberal wing. As a consequence of the current alignment, Professor Devins said, \u201cthe Roberts court has generated more marquee decisions divided by party alignment than all other courts combined.\u201d The last term\u2019s big cases did not for the most part follow that pattern because Justice Kennedy, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and sits at the court\u2019s ideological fulcrum, voted with the court\u2019s liberal wing at an unusually high rate. Advertisement Continue reading the main story \u201cThe story of the last term is that the left side of the court did a lot of winning,\u201d said Irving L. Gornstein, the executive director of Georgetown\u2019s Supreme Court Institute. \u201cThis term,\u201d he added, \u201cI would expect a return to the norm, with the right side of the court winning a majority but by no means all of the big cases, with Justice Kennedy again the key vote.\u201d The cases on unions and affirmative action, for instance, were almost certainly added to the docket by the more conservative justices in the confidence that they would be able to move the law to the right. Both cases were created by legal entrepreneurs and brought on behalf of plaintiffs recruited by conservative groups. Photo The case on unions, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, No. 14-915, may deal a blow to organized labor. \u201cIt could set the stage for a Citizens United-style reconsideration in the area of union dues,\u201d said John P. Elwood, a lawyer at Vinson & Elkins, referring to the 2010 decision that transformed campaign finance law. The new case takes aim at a compromise fashioned by the court in 1977 in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. In Abood, the court said public workers who decline to join a union can nevertheless be required to pay for the union\u2019s collective bargaining efforts to prevent freeloading and ensure \u201clabor peace.\u201d But nonmembers, the court went on, cannot be forced to pay for the union\u2019s purely political activities, as that would amount to forbidden compelled speech under the First Amendment. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. The California teachers who brought the new case say t collective bargaining is itself political, as it concerns public policy on spending, seniority, class size and the like. Unions respond that the case is a First Amendment Trojan horse designed to further weaken the power of organized labor. The unions have reason to be nervous. The court has twice signaled that it may be ready to overrule Abood notwithstanding the doctrine of stare decisis, Latin for \u201cto stand by things decided.\u201d Justice Alito, the court\u2019s leading critic of Abood, offered a joking alternative definition in public remarks last month. \u201cIt is a Latin phrase,\u201d he said. \u201cIt means \u2018to leave things decided when it suits our purposes.\u2019 \u201d Advertisement Continue reading the main story The case on unions is not the only sequel on the docket. In Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, No. 14-981, the court will return to the subject of whether the Constitution permits public colleges and universities to take account of race in admissions decisions. In 2013, in a short, vague compromise ruling in the case, the court refused to decide whether the admissions plan at the University of Texas at Austin \u2014 which combines race-neutral and race-conscious tools to achieve diversity \u2014 is constitutional. The court\u2019s return to the subject after an appeals court sustained the hybrid plan has struck many supporters of affirmative action as an ominous sign. The case was brought by the Project on Fair Representation, a small conservative advocacy group that successfully mounted a challenge to the Voting Rights Act in 2013. The group is also behind this term\u2019s most important case on voting, Evenwel v. Abbott, No. 14-940, which asks the court to address the meaning of \u201cone person, one vote.\u201d The court has never resolved whether state voting districts should have the same number of people, including unauthorized immigrants, children and others not eligible to vote, or the same number of voters. Allowing states to count only voters would in many parts of the country shift political power from cities to rural areas, a move that would generally benefit Republicans. On the last day of the term in June, Justices Breyer and Ginsburg announced that they had grave doubts about the constitutionality of the death penalty and seemed to invite a broad challenge. It has not yet arrived, and it is hardly clear that a majority would be receptive to such a challenge. The new term does have an unusually high number of capital cases presenting more focused issues, including a challenge to Florida\u2019s sentencing scheme, Hurst v. Florida, No. 14-7505, and a case on race discrimination in jury selection, Foster v. Chatman, No. 14-8349. The court has not heard an abortion case since 2007, when it upheld the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. That seems about to change. The most likely candidate is a challenge to a Texas law that threatens to reduce the number of abortion clinics in the state to about 10, down from more than 40. Should the court agree to hear the case, Whole Woman\u2019s Health Center v. Cole, No. 15-274, it is likely to produce the most important abortion ruling since 1992, when Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirmed the constitutional right to abortion identified in Roe v. Wade in 1973. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The question in the Texas case is whether two parts of a 2013 state law imposed an \u201cundue burden\u201d on the constitutional right to abortion. One part of the law requires all clinics in the state to meet the standards for \u201cambulatory surgical centers,\u201d including regulations concerning buildings, equipment and staffing. The other requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. An appeals court largely upheld the contested provisions, but the Supreme Court in June, by a 5-to-4 vote, stepped in to block the ruling while it considered whether to hear the case. That suggests three things: that the court is likely to hear the case, that its decision will be closely divided and that the ruling will land in June, thrusting a volatile and divisive issue into the middle of the presidential race. WASHINGTON\u2014The death penalty is shaping up to be a big issue for the Supreme Court as it begins a new term Monday, with at least six capital-punishment cases on the docket and a recent wave of executions keeping the justices up late to field last-minute appeals. In the weeks ahead, the court is set to hear arguments over the constitutionality of capital sentences in Florida, Georgia, Kansas and Pennsylvania. The focus on execution issues follows a 5-4 ruling last term involving a sedative used for lethal injections. The split...", "source": "news_summ", "evaluation": "rouge"}
{"instructions": ["Please summarize these news articles."], "outputs": ["\u2013 In a lawsuit seeking more than $175,000 in damages, a male student claims the University of Chicago has an \"anti-male gender bias\" and \"routinely portrays a large portion of their male students as sexual predators.\" The New York Daily News reports the student, named only as John Doe in the lawsuit, was accused of sexual assault by two female students. Despite being found innocent by the university in both cases, John Doe claims that he was the victim of a \"fundamentally unfair, arbitrary, and capricious disciplinary procedure\" and that the university violated his rights under Title IX. According to Chicagoist, John Doe claims the university disciplines male students \"who accept physical contact initiated by female students.\" The University of Chicago was recently accused of not doing enough for female students who had been sexually assaulted, but John Doe's lawsuit claims the university has now gone too far in the other direction, the Chicago Maroon reports. He says the university did nothing when the two women called him a sexual predator online and in public, leading to the protest of a theater production he directed. He claims the university ignored a Title IX complaint he filed against one of the women after she filed a similar complaint against him. The lawsuit states he was even removed from a physics class he shared with one of the women at her request. In addition to suing the University of Chicago for creating a \"hostile environment for men,\" John Doe is also suing one of the women. (Something similar happened at the University of Texas-Austin.)"], "input": "University of Chicago / Facebook Amid a high-profile controversy at the University of Chicago over the value of trigger warnings and \"intellectual safe spaces,\" a male student is suing the Hyde Park school on the grounds that it is not a safe space for young men. The unnamed student has been accused of sexual assault by his peers at least twice, but the university found he was not at fault after investigating the claims through its own process for resolving on-campus disputes between students. The lawsuit, filed last week, demands $175,000 in damages against the university. The university has come under scrutiny in recent years for its handling of sexual assault accusations among students and is being investigated by the federal government for violating Title IX. Now this student says the school has swung too far in the other direction, creating a \"gender-biased, hostile environment against males, like John Doe, based in part on [the University of Chicago's] pattern and practice of investigating and disciplining male students who accept physical contact initiated by female students, retaliating against male students, and providing female students preferential treatment under its Title IX policies.\" The lawsuit, which can be read in full here, details the relationships John Doe had with two unnamed women referred to as Jane Doe and Jane Roe in 2013. The lawsuit claims the relationships and his sexual activities with them were always consensual, but Jane Doe began publicly accusing him of sexual assaulting them in 2016, several years after the fact. The lawsuit excerpts a series of Tumblr blog posts written by one of his accusers in 2013 and 2014 as evidence that the relationship was in fact consensual. Among other issues, the male student says he was harassed by the female students after one Tweeted about the alleged assault and a group of students staged a protest to boycott a student theater production he directed, and after his named was placed on \"the Hyde Park List,\"\u2014a very unofficial list of University of Chicago students accused of sexual misconduct that was disseminated anonymously in 2014. The complaint relies on some common arguments used to refute sexual assault claims women bring against men: that the women are scorned lovers trying to re-write history out of anger, and that people who believe sexual assault allegations are biased against men because of the mainstream cultural image of men as more interested in casual sex than women. The lawsuit claims one female student had a \"vendetta\" against him and was retaliating after being rejected, and that the university operates under \u201carchaic assumptions that female students do not sexually assault or harass their fellow male students because females are less sexually promiscuous than men.\u201d [H/T Jezebel] A University of Chicago male student from New York accused twice of sexual assault slammed the school's conduct in a new lawsuit, charging that \"UC routinely portrays a large portion of their male students as sexual predators.\" The student, named as John Doe in the lawsuit, claims the university violated Title IX with its unfair treatment. He was subjected to a \"fundamentally unfair, arbitrary and capricious disciplinary procedure that violates both Title IX and UC's policies and/or procedures related to allegations of sexual misconduct,\" according to the lawsuit obtained by the Chicago Maroon, a student newspaper at the school. Title IX is in place to ensure that universities don't discriminate against students and faculty based on gender. The male student, from Somers, N.Y., charges that two women, named as Jane Doe and Jane Roe, falsely accused him of sexual assault. Jane Doe is also being sued, according to the Maroon. What you should know about reporting sex assault on campus The suit alleges that the school refused to allow John Doe to file a Title IX complaint against Jane Doe for harassment and retaliation, yet UC allowed Jane Doe to file a Title IX complaint to retaliate for an alleged sexual assault two years earlier. John Doe and Jane Doe became acquainted before their first semester in September 2013 through a Facebook page for accepted students, according to the lawsuit. John Doe and Roe met during their first semester. The lawsuit states that after John Doe broke off his relationships with the two women, Roe filed a complaint with the school falsely accusing John Doe of sexual misconduct in the spring of 2014. The accusation was regarding alleged conduct that took place the previous December. The school rejected Roe's claims \"despite UC's anti-male gender bias conduct and gross negligence in conducting an investigation,\" according to the lawsuit. Brown student could be allowed back after sex assault suspension However, Roe then launched a vendetta against the male student, according to the lawsuit. She placed his name on the so-called \"Hyde Park List,\" a Tumblr page accusing six current and former male students of sexual assault or sexual harassment. Roe also \"falsely and maliciously advised members of UC's community that John Doe was a sexual predator,\" according to the suit. The school did not take any steps to \"correct\" Roe's conduct, according to the suit, as John Doe was told the school's \"confidentiality\" policies prevented him from personally refuting Roe's defamation within \"UC's Community.\" Roe then blogged in October of 2014 that the school was forcing her to participate in class \"with the person who sexually assaulted [HER].\" The school ordered John Doe removed from the physics lab they were both in, despite his strong opposition, the lawsuit states. UC investigating sexually explicit \u2018gag reflex' sign near campus In addition, the school \"unlawfully alleged a right to discipline\" the male student because his sister responded to Roe's \"fallacious\" posts on Twitter. The other woman mentioned in the suit, Jane Doe, first mentioned in her blog that she had been \"sexually assaulted\" in November of 2014, according to the complaint. However, in her own \"vernacular,\" according to the lawsuit, the male student and Jane Doe \"hooked up\" in September of 2013 but did not have sexual intercourse. Jane Doe harassed the male student in a series of tweets earlier this year, according to the lawsuit. The male student filed a Title IX complaint against her, but the school took no action. The suit seeks $175,000 in damages, according to the Maroon. A male student twice investigated for sexual assault by the University of Chicago has sued the school, saying its handling of the complaints against him demonstrated a \u201cgender-based, hostile environment against males.\u201d The student, identified in the lawsuit as \u201cJohn Doe\u201d from Somers, N.Y., claims the University failed to treat him fairly after a University disciplinary panel cleared him of a sexual assault charge in 2014. The suit also accuses a female student of defamation for publicly saying he assaulted her and others. The complaint was filed on August 24 in federal court in Chicago. The suit asks for more than $175,000 in damages. The case against the University states that, in its treatment of the plaintiff in the case, \u201cUC was motivated by pro-female, anti-male bias that was, at least in part, adopted to refute criticism within the student body and public press that UC was turning a blind eye to female complaints of sexual assault.\u201d The suit is part of a recent trend of litigation by male students at American universities who claim to have been discriminated against in sexual assault investigations in violation of Title IX, a federal statute that prohibits sex discrimination at colleges and universities that receive federal funding. So far, these claims have generally failed, though last month a federal appeals court ruled in favor of a similar suit against Columbia University. The suit involves two separate allegations of sexual assault against \u201cJohn Doe\u201d filed with the University as Title IX complaints. The first allegation, filed by a female student called \u201cJane Roe\u201d in the lawsuit, was decided in \u201cJohn Doe\u2019s\u201d favor in 2014. The second was filed this year by another female student, called \u201cJane Doe\u201d in the lawsuit, over an alleged instance of sexual assault in 2013. \u201cJane Doe\u201d is being sued, along with the University. The student the suit refers to as \u201cJane Roe\u201d said \u201cJohn Doe\u201d assaulted her in the spring of 2014. A College disciplinary hearing in May of that year \u201cfound that the preponderance of the evidence did not support [\u201cJane Roe\u2019s\u201d] allegation that [\u201cJohn Doe\u201d] sexually assaulted her,\u201d according to a letter sent to the plaintiff by former assistant dean of students Kathleen Ford. The letter was included as an exhibit in the suit. The suit alleges that \u201cJane Roe\u201d told other people at the University of Chicago that \u201cJohn Doe\u201d had raped her and that she added his name to the \u201cHyde Park List,\u201d a Tumblr page that listed students it said had committed sexual assault or harassment. \u201cRoe\u201d is not a defendant in the lawsuit. Instead, the suit points to the University\u2019s decision to remove the plaintiff from a physics lab with \u201cRoe\u201d after the case had been decided, and its failure to stop her from repeating her allegations, as examples of the University\u2019s bias against him as a male student. In May of this year, the plaintiff directed a TAPS-sponsored play called The Bald Soprano, according to an email released as an exhibit in the case. Before the play\u2019s debut, flyers were posted on bulletin boards around campus urging people to boycott the show, and a protest was staged near the theater on the play\u2019s opening night. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s about supporting survivors, boycotting events put on by perpetrators of sexual assault, and accountability in RSOs,\u201d then second-year Emma Maltby, who participated in the protest, said when interviewed by The Maroon at the time. At the protest, students held signs with slogans like \u201cSupport survivors, not perpetrators,\u201d \u201cBoycott rapists,\u201d \u201cSilence = violence,\u201d and \u201cHold your friends accountable.\u201d Some protesters also had tape over their mouths, with \u201cSupport survivors\u201d written on the tape. Students protest in Reynolds Club. Zoe Kaiser At the time, protesters would not speak to The Maroon on the record about whether their protest was related to a specific incident or person. Before the protest, the female student called \u201cJane Doe\u201d in the suit tweeted that the director of a TAPS show had assaulted her and other people on campus. The plaintiff\u2019s law firm sent her a cease-and-desist order in June, demanding that she stop saying that \u201cJohn Doe\u201d had sexually assaulted her or other people, formally apologize to him, and issue an apology and retraction on social media. As of publication, the original tweet was still posted on \u201cJane Doe\u2019s\u201d Twitter account. In May of this year, \u201cJohn Doe\u201d filed a Title IX complaint against \u201cJane Doe,\u201d alleging harassment. Jeremy Inabinet, associate dean of students for disciplinary affairs, told him that the actions he cited did not constitute harassment under University policy and dismissed the allegation. \u201cJane Doe\u201d then filed a Title IX complaint in June against \u201cJohn Doe,\u201d saying he had sexually assaulted her in 2013. \"John Doe\" then filed another complaint with the school, saying that \"Jane Doe\u2019s\" complaint was in bad faith and retaliation against his decision to file his May complaint and otherwise defend himself against rape allegations. The University initially told \u201cJohn Doe\u201d that it planned to pursue the case against him under the 2015 Student Manual, which had a different definition of consent from the 2013 Student Manual. The suit says that \u201cit was impossible for John Doe to know whether his consensual physical encounters with Jane Doe in 2013 might violate subsequently created stringent mandates in UC\u2019s 2015 Manual.\u201d The suit also claims that the University failed to respond to public accusations that \u201cJohn Doe\u201d had sexually assaulted people and treated him unfairly by agreeing to hear \u201cJane Doe\u2019s\u201d Title IX complaint. The suit includes selected posts from the female defendant\u2019s blog which it alleges show that their 2013 encounter was consensual. The suit alleges that the female defendant\u2019s comments were defamatory, and claims that she and the University inflicted emotional distress on the plaintiff. It alleges, among other things, that the University of Chicago violated Title IX by creating a hostile environment, selectively enforcing its provisions, and retaliating against \u201cJohn Doe\u201d for defending himself against allegations of sexual assault. The case states that the University\u2019s policy for Title IX investigations takes cues from the Department of Education\u2019s \u201cDear Colleague\u201d letter, which lays out how Title IX complaints about sexual violence or harassment between students should be handled by school administrations. It alleges that the letter defines females as the victims in Title IX cases and makes it difficult for male defendants to defend themselves in such investigations. All of the parties in this case declined to comment, either personally or through their legal counsel or press representative. An August 24 docket entry by the clerk of the district court noted that the University of Chicago had agreed to extend the amount of time the plaintiff had to respond to the defendant\u2019s Title IX complaint, and to adjudicate that complaint under the definition of consent found in the 2013 Student Manual rather than the definition in the 2015 Student Manual. Judge Edmond Chang ruled that the case will continue to be conducted using pseudonyms for the plaintiff and female defendant, as the plaintiff requested. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for September 14. Editor\u2019s Note: Based on information available in now-public court documents, it is possible to identify the parties in this lawsuit. The Maroon chose not to identify them because \u201cJohn Doe\u201d is a plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit, and reporting his name might further this alleged defamation, and because \u201cJane Doe\u201d alleges that she is a victim of sexual assault, and The Maroon, like many media organizations, does not report the names of alleged victims of sexual assault without the victim\u2019s permission in cases when the victim\u2019s name is not widely known.", "source": "news_summ", "evaluation": "rouge"}
{"instructions": ["Please summarize these news articles."], "outputs": ["\u2013 Day three of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing has opened with a bang: Democratic Sen. Cory Booker says he has ordered his staff to release a Kavanaugh email even though it's supposed to remain under wraps. It's not clear yet what the email says, but NBC News reports that it concerns racial profiling. Booker called his act one of civil disobedience, reports NPR. \"I openly invite and accept the consequences,\" he said, per CNN. \"The penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate.\" Indeed, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn read aloud rules stating that a senator who divulges \"the secret or confidential business\" of the Senate faces expulsion, reports the Washington Post. \"Bring the charges,\" said Booker. \"All of us are ready to face that rule,\" added fellow Democrat Richard Blumenthal. Democrats have been chafing that too many of Kavanaugh's documents are either being withheld or deemed off limits for the hearing. Booker's stand comes after the New York Times obtained some of those off-limits emails. In one from 2003, when Kavanaugh was working in the White House of George W. Bush, he objects to language that Roe v. Wade is \"settled law.\" He was going over a draft opinion stating that \"it is widely accepted by legal scholars across the board that Roe v. Wade and its progeny are the settled law of the land,\" but he took exception to the phrase. \"I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so,\" he wrote at the time. As the Times notes, Kavanaugh didn't state his personal opinion on the matter."], "input": "Follow Friday\u2019s updates on the Kavanaugh hearing here: John Dean to warn of a \u2018pro-presidential powers\u2019 Supreme Court Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh is appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday as senators continue publicly interviewing President Trump\u2019s nominee for the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh, a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, has a good chance of being confirmed when the Senate votes later this month. Under questioning from senators, he has so far touched on Roe v. Wade, said courts \u2014 not the president \u2014 are \u201cthe final word\u201d and, as the hearing began, watched drama unfold regarding Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.)\u2019s pledge to release confidential documents. Key moments from the hearing: \u2022 Drama over confidential emails....that were already cleared for public release \u2022 Kavanaugh advised against calling Roe \u201csettled law\u201d \u2022 Kavanaugh elaborates on dissent on contraception and religious objections \u2022 Emails show more involvement with nominee than Kavanaugh previously suggested 10:13 p.m.: Hearing adjourned More than 12 hours after the questioning began Thursday morning, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) adjourned the confirmation hearing for the day. Grassley closed the session by praising Kavanaugh for his \u201ccompelling and credible\u201d answers, highlighted his history on the bench and said that \u201cunquestionably, you\u2019re qualified to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.\u201d \u201cI hope a lot of people in this country have formed very positive views of you, as I have,\u201d Grassley said. Kavanaugh spent nearly 24 hours over two days answering questions, with many of the discussions on Thursday centering in some way or another on President Trump, who nominated Kavanaugh to the high court. Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including some Republicans, pressed Kavanaugh about his expansive views of presidential power and past writings that concluded civil suits and criminal investigations of presidents would be better delayed until the chief executive left office. Read more about Thursday\u2019s hearing here. Friday is the fourth and final scheduled day of Kavanaugh\u2019s confirmation hearing, which will feature comments from witnesses. \u2014 Mark Berman 8:55 p.m.: Behind the dramatic release of once-concealed documents The dramatic release Thursday of once-concealed documents from Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh\u2019s tenure in the George W. Bush White House spotlighted the simmering frustrations from Democrats over how Republicans have kept secret vast parts of Kavanaugh\u2019s voluminous paper trail. Tens of thousands of pages from Kavanaugh\u2019s records have been hidden from public view, only available to senators and certain congressional aides in advance of Kavanaugh\u2019s confirmation hearings this week. On Thursday, a small sample of the \u201ccommittee confidential\u201d documents were disclosed after Democratic senators asked that they be approved for public release, raising questions about why the documents had been considered confidential in the first place. Read more here. 7:30 p.m.: Pressed on gay rights, Kavanaugh declines to say same-sex marriage ruling was correctly decided Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) pressed Kavanaugh for the first time Thursday night about gay rights. The judge refused to answer whether the high court\u2019s ruling declaring a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry was correctly decided. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the man Kavanaugh would replace on the bench, cast the deciding vote in the case, Obergefell v. Hodges. Kavanaugh instead read aloud from another Kennedy ruling this year involving gay rights in which the justice wrote that gay people \u201ccannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth.\u201d Harris noted that Kavanaugh earlier this week characterized the landmark decision declaring segregated schools unconstitutional as a great moment in history, and asked whether the high court\u2019s decision legalizing gay marriage was a similar moment. The judge said only that it was precedent. The White House sent out information on Kavanaugh\u2019s record on gay rights soon after the exchange, noting that Kavanaugh has not had a major case involving gay rights in his 12 years on the D.C. Circuit. \u201cKavanaugh rules fairly and impartially based on the law, not the identity of the parties before him, and he has a record of faithfully applying legal protections for racial minorities, women, and other protected groups,\u201dthe White House statement said. \u2014 Ann E. Marimow 7:11 p.m.: Kavanaugh, pressed again, said he has not discussed the Mueller probe Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), who late Wednesday asked Kavanaugh if he had discussed special counsel Robert S. Mueller III\u2019s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election with attorneys at the law firm founded by President Trump\u2019s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, questioned him again Thursday. Picking up a line of inquiry that her colleagues, including Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), had followed during the day, Harris peppered him with follow-up questions. Noting that he had denied having \u201cinappropriate\u201d conversations about it, Harris asking Kavanaugh if he had discussions regarding the special counsel\u2019s probe and whether he had discussed it with anyone at Kasowitz\u2019s firm, saying she had unspecified \u201creliable information\u201d he had done the latter. (The firm denied this earlier in the day). Kavanaugh asked Harris if she was asking whether he spoke to anyone specific about it, but she said that was not the question. \u201cThat is not the subject of the question, sir,\u201d she said. \u201cThe subject of the question is you and whether you were part of a conversation regarding special counsel Mueller\u2019s investigation.\u201d Kavanaugh, nearly a day after their exchange late Wednesday, responded: \u201cThe answer\u2019s no.\u201d Harris replied by thanking him and saying \u201cit would have been great if you could\u2019ve said that last night,\u201d prompting Kavanaugh to begin a reply before cutting him off. \u201cLet\u2019s move on,\u201d Harris said. The end of the exchange prompted a rare reaction from White House counsel Donald McGahn, who has largely kept his poker face during the hearings while seated behind Kavanaugh in clear view of the cameras. After Harris\u2019s remark about moving on, McGahn gave a slight shake of his head and briefly arched his eyebrows. \u2014 Mark Berman 6:52 p.m.: Booker asks why Kavanaugh won\u2019t recuse himself from the Mueller probe Hours after Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) took center stage with drama over some of the documents the committee had, he had a chance to speak to Kavanaugh, pressing the judge on a variation of a question he had been asked previously during the hearings: Why not recuse himself from any court matters that would involve the ongoing special counsel probe because, as Booker said, \u201cit\u2019s really important that the Supreme Court be above suspicion\u201d? Kavanaugh responded by saying doing so would mean showing he did not have judicial independence. \u201cAll I would be doing is demonstrating that I don\u2019t have the independence of the judiciary \u2026 that is necessary to be a good judge,\u201d Kavanaugh responded. \u201cAll of the nominees who\u2019ve gone before have declined to commit because that would be inconsistent with judicial independence.\u201d \u2014 Seung Min Kim 5:50 p.m.: Hearing pauses for dinner The hearing was halted until 6:15 p.m. for a dinner break. After that, four senators will get their turns to question Kavanaugh before the committee opens up a new round of questioning. 5:15 p.m.: Kavanaugh declines to condemn Trump\u2019s attacks on judiciary Kavanaugh refused to repudiate what Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) described as President Trump\u2019s \u201cblatant, craven and repeated attacks\u201d on the federal judiciary. Blumenthal was referring to Trump\u2019s criticism that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg \u201chas embarrassed us all\u201d and \u201cher mind is shot.\u201d Ginsburg had been critical of Trump, prompting him to make the comments on Twitter during the 2016 presidential campaign. Kavanaugh took a pass, saying he did not want to \u201cget within three Zip codes\u201d of such a political controversy. Blumemthal noted that the president\u2019s first Supreme Court pick, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, explicitly condemned Trump\u2019s attacks as \u201cdisheartening\u201d and \u201cdemoralizing.\u201d Gorsuch spoke generally, but his comments came after the president had criticized the ethnic background of Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who ruled against the administration\u2019s travel ban. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) followed up, suggesting that the judge was resisting any criticism of President Trump. Kavanaugh disagreed. As a judge, he said, \u201cWe stay out of politics, we don\u2019t comment on comments made by politicians.\u201d \u2014 Ann E. Marimow 5:08 p.m.: Blumenthal presses Kavanaugh on Mueller probe The ongoing special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election took center stage at the hearing again Thursday afternoon \u2014 this time, in a line of questioning from Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). Following questions on Wednesday night and again Thursday morning, Kavanaugh was again pressed about special counsel Robert S. Mueller III\u2019s probe, which could eventually make its way before a Supreme Court featuring Kavanaugh as a member. Blumenthal asked Kavanaugh if he had ever discussed the investigation with anyone, and Kavanaugh echoed his earlier remark in saying: \u201cI\u2019ve had no inappropriate discussions with anyone.\u201d Blumenthal followed that by asking if the judge had ever discussed the investigation with anyone, whether appropriately or inappropriately. Kavanaugh acknowledged that it had come up \u2014 \u201cIf you\u2019re walking around in America it\u2019s coming up, senator\u201d \u2014 but he also repeatedly emphasized that he never crossed any lines in discussing it. \u201cI\u2019ve never suggested anything about my views about anything, commitments, foreshadowing, I\u2019ve had no inappropriate discussions,\u201d he said. Blumenthal then pivoted to asking if Kavanaugh had discussed it with anyone in the White House, including Donald McGahn, the White House counsel seated behind Kavanaugh during the hearings. When Blumenthal asked Kavanaugh if he had discussed the probe with McGahn or anyone else in the White House, calling it a yes or no question, Kavanaugh said: \u201cI\u2019m not remembering any discussions like that.\u201d He added, though, that during his preparations for the confirmation hearings, he had readied for queries like the ones Blumenthal had posed. The questioning grew mildly tense, with Blumenthal suggesting that Kavanaugh\u2019s answers were ambiguous, which the judge disputed. After Blumenthal finished his questioning, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) broke in to ask Kavanaugh if he had ever suggested to anyone how he would rule on any matter related to the Mueller probe, and the judge answered: \u201cNo, I have not.\u201d Blumenthal followed up his questions about the probe by asking whether Kavanaugh had discussed the inquiry with anyone at the law firm founded by President Trump\u2019s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz. Earlier on Thursday, the firm Kasowitz Benson Torres said in a statement that \u201cno discussions\u201d regarding the probe had occurred \u201cbetween Judge Kavanaugh and anyone at our firm.\u201d When asked by Blumenthal, Kavanaugh echoed his earlier comments that he did not remember any discussions with anyone at the firm about the probe. When asked if he knew Kasowitz, Kavanaugh said no. When asked if he knew anyone at the firm, Kavanaugh said yes, naming Ed McNally, who used to work at the White House counsel\u2019s office and is now at the firm. Kavanaugh said he had not discussed the special counsel\u2019s probe with McNally. \u2014 Mark Berman 3:35 p.m.: Kavanaugh tries to clarify involvement in judge\u2019s confirmation Kavanaugh on Thursday discussed his involvement in the confirmation of now-Judge William H. Pryor Jr. to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit \u2014 clarifying his testimony from 2004 when he said he hadn\u2019t handled that nomination when he served as an associate White House counsel. The nominee\u2019s comments came after the new disclosure of emails earlier Thursday that detailed what appeared to be Kavanaugh\u2019s involvement in Pryor\u2019s confirmation fight, including conference calls to coordinate strategy and meetings to discuss plans for the nominee\u2019s hearings. Kavanaugh explained Thursday that in the George W. Bush White House counsel\u2019s office, one person would be assigned to handle the confirmation of each judicial nominee. \u201cAs I recall at least, I was not the primary person on that,\u201d Kavanaugh said, referring to Pryor\u2019s nomination. While Kavanaugh said he didn\u2019t recall specifics of his involvement, some examples he cited were attendance at meetings and mock hearing sessions. In 2004, during his confirmation hearing for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Kavanaugh said several times under questioning by then-Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that he had not been involved with Pryor\u2019s confirmation. \u201cI am familiar generally with Mr. Pryor, but that was not one that I worked on personally,\u201d Kavanaugh testified then, although he noted during the hearing that he knew Pryor. Upon further questioning, Kavanaugh said: \u201cI was not involved in handling his nomination.\u201d Kavanaugh, with the help of Grassley, clarified another one of the emails involving Pryor. On Dec. 16, 2002, Kavanaugh received an email from another White House aide with the subject line \u201cCA11\u201d \u2014 a reference to the 11th Circuit. The aide, Kyle Sampson, asked: \u201cHow did the Pryor interview go?\u201d Kavanaugh then responded: \u201cCall me.\u201d Grassley, noting that Democrats attempted to \u201cinsinuate that you interviewed Judge Pryor,\u201d asked Kavanaugh: It\u2019s \u201cmore likely to indicate that you know the people who interviewed Judge Pryor?\u201d Kavanaugh responded: \u201cThat sounds correct.\u201d \u2014 Seung Min Kim 2:56 p.m.: Kavanaugh elaborates on dissent on contraception and religious objections Advocates for reproductive rights are concerned about the contraceptive-coverage requirement in the Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare. In a 2015 case, Kavanaugh dissented from his colleagues and sided with the group Priests for Life, which argued that a provision in the law to opt out for religious objections was too burdensome. Kavanaugh elaborated Thursday on the basis for his dissent, telling Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) that \u201cthe government had ways to ensure contraceptive coverage without doing so on the backs of religious objectors.\u201d The issue remains in court after the Trump administration issued new rules making it easier for employers to refuse to provide coverage for birth control on the basis of religious objections. Cruz also asked the judge about a case on which he worked as a lawyer in private practice in which he backed a high school\u2019s decision to allow student-led prayers over the public address system at football games. He argued that students were delivering their own messages, not speaking on behalf of the school. The Supreme Court disagreed, finding the policy unconstitutional. \u201cReligious people, speakers and speech are entitled to equal treatment,\u201d Kavanaugh said Thursday. \u2014 Ann E. Marimow 2:41 p.m.: Kasowitz firm denies discussing special counsel probe with Kavanaugh In one of the most widely noticed parts of the hearings, Kavanaugh was questioned late Wednesday by Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) about whether he had discussed special counsel Robert S. Mueller III\u2019s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election with attorneys at the law firm founded by President Trump\u2019s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz. On Thursday, Kavanaugh was asked again about this by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who gave the judge an opportunity to clarify his responses to Harris. Kavanaugh said he did not \u201crecall any conversations of that kind,\u201d adding that he was not familiar with the names of all of the attorneys from the firm Kasowitz Benson Torres. Kavanaugh said he had not had any \u201cinappropriate conversations\u201d or commented on his views about the legal aspects of the probe, elements of which could potentially make it to the Supreme Court. On Thursday, the Kasowitz firm also said that no one there had discussed the probe with Kavanaugh. \u201cThere have been no discussions regarding Robert Mueller\u2019s investigation between Judge Kavanaugh and anyone at our firm,\u201d the law firm said in a statement. \u2014 Mark Berman 1:57 p.m.: Hearings resume after lunch break After pausing for lunch, the hearings are getting back underway. The first hours brought an extended drama over documents as well as questions about abortion, executive power and the special counsel\u2019s probe, with extensive questioning still expected for the remainder of the day. 1:38 p.m.: The drama over \u2018confidential\u2019 emails \u2014 which were already cleared for public release Democrats mounted dramatic protests Thursday over documents related to Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh\u2019s tenure in the George W. Bush White House, as senators began releasing his emails that had been withheld from the public. The records that Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) posted on their websites Thursday morning had, in fact, already been cleared for public release, according to Democratic and Republican aides on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Those documents were cleared earlier Thursday morning, according to spokesmen for both sides. Nevertheless, the drama over the emails once marked \u201ccommittee confidential\u201d engulfed much of the third day of Kavanaugh\u2019s confirmation hearings, with Booker vowing to disclose them in defiance of Senate rules. \u201cI openly invite and accept the consequences of releasing that email right now,\u201d Booker said. \u201cThe emails are being withheld from the public have nothing to do with national security.\u201d Bill Burck, Bush\u2019s presidential records representative, said later Thursday, \u201cWe cleared the documents last night shortly after Senator Booker\u2019s staff asked us to. We were surprised to learn about Senator Booker\u2019s histrionics this morning because we had already told him he could use the documents publicly. In fact, we have said yes to every request made by the Senate Democrats to make documents public.\u201d Such theatrics have characterized Kavanaugh\u2019s hearings, in which Democrats have repeatedly complained that Republicans have withheld documents from the committee and the public that shed important light on Kavanaugh\u2019s past. The documents that took center stage on Thursday were labeled \u201ccommittee confidential\u201d \u2014 available for any senators to view but shielded from the public. Late Wednesday, a handful of Democratic senators sent Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) several requests to make emails once marked \u201ccommittee confidential\u201d available to the public so they could discuss them during the public hearing on Thursday. Those records are being cleared as the Justice Department reviews them, as well as representatives for Bush. Booker may have violated Senate rules late Wednesday, when he spoke about the content of emails that technically were still under \u201ccommittee confidential\u201d status at that point. \u201cYou\u2019ve also written that an effort designed to benefit minority-owned businesses, an effort to try to give them a fair shake because they had been historically excluded \u2014 and these are your words now \u2014 used a lot of legalisms and disguises to mask what is, in reality, a naked racial set-aside. That\u2019s what you said. That\u2019s how you referred to it,\u201d Booker said, referring to one of the emails from Kavanaugh. Later in his questioning, Booker referred again to the committee confidential emails: \u201cI have letters here, sir, that have asked for \u2014 now, the one email specifically entitled racial profiling that somehow \u2014 I mean, literally the email was entitled racial profiling, that somehow was designated as something that the public couldn\u2019t see. This wasn\u2019t \u2014 this wasn\u2019t personal information.\u201d Releasing \u201ccommittee confidential\u201d information violates Senate rules and could result in expulsion from the Senate. But whether the Senate actually pursues the violation is a separate question. \u2014 Seung Min Kim 1:17 p.m.: Hearing pauses for lunch Grassley paused the hearing for a lunch break, which he said would take 30 minutes but potentially longer, noting that senators have two votes scheduled this afternoon. 1:10 p.m.: Court orders, not the president, are \u201cthe final word,\u201d Kavanaugh says Senate Democrats raised concerns Thursday about the president\u2019s attacks this week on the Justice Department and Kavanaugh\u2019s broad view of executive power expressed in his legal opinions and speeches. In a tweet on Monday, Trump criticized Attorney General Jeff Sessions for the recent indictments of two Republican congressmen, the latest in a string of criticisms the president has levied against both Sessions and the department he leads. \u201cIn this age of President Donald Trump, this expansive view of presidential power takes on added significance,\u201d said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). Kavanaugh emphasized the importance of the separation of powers and an independent judiciary as a backstop. \u201cI\u2019ve made clear in my writings that a court order that requires a president to do something or prohibits president from doing something is the final word in our system,\u201d Kavanaugh said. \u2014 Ann E. Marimow 12:32 p.m.: Hearing resumes After a 15-minute break that lasted for about 25 minutes, Kavanaugh has taken his seat again to answer questions. 12 p.m.: Read Kavanaugh\u2019s email on Roe v. Wade In an email Kavanaugh wrote in 2003 that was made public Thursday, he argued against calling the decision \u201csettled law of the land.\u201d In his email, Kavanaugh wrote that he was \u201cnot sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe\u201d that way, noting that the Supreme Court \u201ccan always overrule its precedent.\u201d When asked about the email by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Thursday, Kavanaugh said he was not expressing his own views, but rather those of \u201clegal scholars.\u201d Read his email here. And head here for more on what else he has said on the issue. \u2014 Mark Berman 11:27 a.m.: Kavanaugh denies any \u201cinappropriate conversations\u201d about special counsel probe Late Wednesday night, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) questioned Kavanaugh about whether he had discussed the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election with attorneys at the law firm founded by President Trump\u2019s personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz. The exchange drew intense scrutiny online, and on Thursday, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) gave Kavanaugh an opportunity to clarify his responses to Harris, who did not disclose with whom she suspected the judge may have had such conversations. \u201cI don\u2019t recall any conversations of that kind,\u201d Kavanaugh told Hatch, adding that he was not familiar with the names of all of the attorneys from the firm Kasowitz Benson Torres. Kavanaugh stressed that he had not had any \u201cinappropriate conversations\u201d or commented on his views about the legal aspects of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III\u2019s investigation that could make their way to the Supreme Court. \u201cNo hints, forecasts, previews, winks \u2014 nothing about my view as a judge or how I would rule on that or anything related to that,\u201d Kavanaugh said. \u2014 Ann E. Marimow 11:20 a.m.: Emails show more involvement with controversial judicial nominee than Kavanaugh previously suggested Kavanaugh testified in 2004 that he did not \u201cpersonally\u201d handle the nomination of a controversial George W. Bush judicial candidate: Judge William Pryor, who now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. But emails made newly public early Thursday show more involvement than he appeared to indicate in his 2004 testimony. On Dec. 16, 2002, Kavanaugh received an email, reviewed by The Washington Post, from another White House aide with the subject line \u201cCA11\u201d \u2014 a reference to the 11th Circuit. The aide, Kyle Sampson, asked: \u201cHow did the Pryor interview go?\u201d Kavanaugh then responded: \u201cCall me.\u201d Another email from June 5, 2003 reviewed by The Post showed Kavanaugh on an email chain with a handful of other officials, alerting them to a 4 p.m. conference call to \u201cdiscuss Pryor and coordinate plans and efforts.\u201d A separate email earlier that day, on which Kavanaugh was blind carbon copied, discussed a meeting that would be held the following day to \u201cdiscuss nominee Bill Pryor\u2019s hearing\u201d the following week. Kavanaugh was nominated by Bush on April 9, 2003, and his confirmation hearing was held June 11, 2003. He was confirmed in 2005. In 2004 during his confirmation hearing for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Kavanaugh said several times under questioning by then-Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that he had not been involved with Pryor\u2019s confirmation. \u201cI am familiar generally with Mr. Pryor, but that was not one that I worked on personally,\u201d Kavanaugh testified then. Upon further questioning, Kavanaugh said \u201cI was not involved in handling his nomination.\u201d Pryor drew controversy because he had called Roe v. Wade \u201cthe worst abomination of constitutional law in our history.\u201d As attorney general of Alabama, he had filed an amicus brief in a key Supreme Court case on gay rights, Lawrence v. Texas, that struck down state sodomy laws. Pryor wrote that states should \u201cremain free to protect the moral standards of their communities through legislation that prohibits homosexual sodomy.\u201d Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), one of the swing votes on Kavanaugh\u2019s nomination to the Supreme Court, voted against Pryor\u2019s confirmation in 2005. White House spokesman Raj Shah did not immediately return a request for comment on the newly disclosed Pryor emails. A spokesman for the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), said some previously \u201ccommittee confidential\u201d documents are being made public as they are cleared by the Justice Department. Other records that have been requested to be made public are still being reviewed by DOJ and representatives for Bush. \u2014 Seung Min Kim 11:01 a.m.: Kavanaugh advised against calling Roe \u201csettled law,\u201d email shows While he was a White House lawyer in the Bush administration, Kavanaugh advised against referring to the Supreme Court\u2019s decision in Roe v. Wade as the \u201csettled law of the land,\u201d according to a 2003 email made public Thursday. \u201cI am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so,\u201d Kavanaugh wrote after reviewing a draft of what was intended to be an op-ed in favor of a judicial nominee. Kavanaugh addressed the decision on Wednesday, refusing to say whether he believed that Roe v. Wade, the decision that guaranteed a woman\u2019s right to an abortion, was correctly decided. He also said the Supreme Court had affirmed it in subsequent cases. On Thursday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) read aloud from Kavanaugh\u2019s newly released email and said it has \u201cbeen viewed as you saying you don\u2019t think Roe is settled\u201d and asked him to explain. Kavanaugh said he was referring not to his own views, but to the \u201cviews of legal scholars.\u201d Read more here. \u2014 Mark Berman 10:45 a.m.: On cameras in the court, Kavanaugh said he is open to hearing from other justices Kavanaugh was asked about a common question regarding the court: Cameras or no cameras? The Supreme Court itself operates in a relatively anachronistic format, blocking cameras \u2014 and most other forms of technology \u2014 when cases are argued and announced. The question of whether it should remain that way has been raised over the years, including to nominees who went on to join the court. During Justice Neil M. Gorsuch\u2019s confirmation hearings last year, he said he was open to hearing more about the issue. Kavanaugh also said he was open to learning more, including from the justices already on the court to hear \u201cwhat they think about this.\u201d \u201cTo learn, if I were to be confirmed, from the experience there and to see what the experience there is like,\u201d he said. \u201cTo listen to the justices currently on the Supreme Court.\u201d \u2014 Mark Berman 10:38 a.m.: Questioning begins and is promptly interrupted by protesters An hour after the hearing got underway, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee chairman, began his questioning of Kavanaugh, who had not spoken while senators debated what to do with confidential documents. A protester shouting about health care and chanting \u201cSHAME\u201d was taken outside by police as Grassley began. Then, as Kavanaugh began to speak, a male protester quickly interrupted, standing on a chair and shouting, \u201cSave Democracy, save Roe!\u201d as he was hauled out of the committee room by the Capitol Police. 10:30 a.m.: Senate Democrats in open revolt over confidential Kavanaugh documents After Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said he was willing to violate Senate rules and release confidential documents, Senate Democrats on the committee appeared in open revolt as Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) read aloud from the rules on expulsion. Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, also tweeted the rules on Thursday morning. Cornyn read aloud from rules stating that a senator who discloses \u201cthe secret or confidential business\u201d of the Senate could be \u201cliable ... to suffer expulsion.\u201d Booker responded by saying: \u201cBring the charges.\u201d His comment was echoed by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who said: \u201cApply the rule, bring the charges. All of us are ready to face that rule.\u201d \u201cThis is about the closest I\u2019ll ever have in my life to an \u2018I am Spartacus\u2019 moment,\u201d Booker said. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) also joined in, saying: \u201cIf there\u2019s going to be some retribution against the senator from New Jersey, count me in.\u201d Their comments were echoed by Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who tweeted during the debate: \u201cI stand w/ Judiciary Committee Democrats who are well within their rights to release these very important documents that a former Kavanaugh deputy designed as \u2018committee confidential.\u2019 The American ppl deserve to know the truth about Judge Kavanaugh\u2019s record. #WhatAreTheyHiding?\u201d \u2014 Ann E. Marimow 10 a.m.: Booker says he is willing to violate Senate rules to release confidential documents The fight over access to Kavanaugh\u2019s records from his time in the Bush White House intensified in the opening moments of the hearing Thursday morning. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said he is prepared to violate Senate rules and release confidential committee documents \u2014 and to risk the consequences. Booker had questioned Kavanaugh Wednesday night about his use of the term \u201cnaked racial set-aside\u201d and said he would make public documents backing up that assertion. \u201cI openly invite and accept the consequences of releasing that email right now,\u201d Booker said. \u201cThe emails being withheld from the public have nothing to do with national security.\u201d Under the committee\u2019s rules, Booker could be expelled from the Senate for releasing such records. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.) angrily responded to Booker and referred to his potential aspirations for higher office, saying \u201crunning for president is no excuse for violating the rules of the Senate.\u201d Cornyn argued that \u201cthis is no different from the senator deciding to release classified information that is deemed classified.\u201d 9:34 a.m.: Hearing gets underway Nearly 12 hours after the first day of questioning wrapped up, Kavanaugh is back before the Senate Judiciary Committee for more questioning. Kavanaugh took his seat at 9:33 a.m., sitting alone at the witness table with a stack of papers to his left and three small water bottles to his right. Before the hearing began, the committee\u2019s Republican members were seen gathered around committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) while he spoke before they took their seats. Grassley gaveled in the hearing at 9:34 a.m. \u2014 Mark Berman 8 a.m.: What to watch for in today\u2019s hearing The third day of hearings will see Kavanaugh facing more questioning from senators. Among other things to expect and watch for: \u2022 The battle over access to records from Kavanaugh\u2019s tenure in the Bush White House is sure to resurface, with Democrats asking the committee to release additional documents that have not been disclosed to the public. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) implied Wednesday that there is evidence in confidential Senate Judiciary Committee records that Kavanaugh in 2003 was privy to an email allegedly stolen by a former committee staffer. Kavanaugh said he never knowingly dealt with stolen records. Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) did not guarantee that those documents would become public this week, but said, \u201cwe\u2019ll try to get them.\u201d \u2022 More questions are likely about Kavanaugh\u2019s views on a host of pivotal issues, including guns, abortion, executive power, health care, affirmative action and more, as well as about his experiences on the bench and in the Bush White House. \u2022 Health care and the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act will continue to be a potent issue, particularly as a legal challenge to the law unfolds in a courtroom in Texas this week. The nominee says he can\u2019t assure senators that he would uphold the law\u2019s requirement that insurers cover people with preexisting conditions because doing so would compromise his judicial independence. Democrats say they will revisit the issue. \u2022 Loud, angry protests are likely to continue to punctuate the Senate debate about Kavanaugh\u2019s legal theory and judicial opinions. A phalanx of Capitol Police officers, dressed in dark blue and some with zip ties, have been a fixture against the back wall of the hearing room, poised to quietly haul out protesters. Capitol Police on Wednesday arrested and charged another 66 people with disorderly conduct for disrupting the hearings. \u2022 In one of the most confusing \u2014 and tense \u2014 exchanges Wednesday, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) raised the prospect without offering evidence that Kavanaugh may have spoken about the Mueller investigation with somebody at Kasowitz, Benson and Torres, a law firm that has represented Trump. It\u2019s unclear whether Harris will revisit the issue again Thursday, but the exchange went viral and quickly became one of the most talked-about moments of the Kavanaugh hearings. Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh appears during a confirmation hearing at the Hart Senate Office Building on Wednesday in Washington. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) Read more coverage: Read Day One and Day Two of the Kavanaugh hearing The Fix: 5 takeaways from the Brett Kavanaugh hearings so far The Daily 202: Kavanaugh hearing offers an \u2018unprecedented\u2019 display of the Senate\u2019s institutional decline Read more at PowerPost Washington (CNN) Brett Kavanaugh emerged from two days of tough questioning in the Senate Judiciary Committee without making any obvious missteps that could imperil his confirmation as the justice who will pull the Supreme Court to the right and hand Donald Trump a generational presidential legacy. He avoided ceding ground on the most contentious issues, either by saying he wanted to keep \"three zip codes\" away from politics or by arguing that he could not comment on \"hypothetical\" cases that could come before him on the nation's top bench. Kavanaugh refused to say whether a sitting president must respond to a subpoena -- not an academic issue in the age of Trump. He declined to agree to Democratic calls for him to recuse himself from any cases related to the Russia investigation. And he would not say where he would come down on abortion, amid expectations among conservatives he would like to overturn Roe v. Wade. But Democrats did not walk away from a deeply divisive hearing with nothing. Top lawmakers showed vigor in cross examining Kavanaugh and by portraying him as Trump's man on the court and may have at least partly lived up to expectations of the party's fired up base for a show of backbone ahead of the mid-term elections. After emerging largely unscathed after the final round of questions from senators that stretched late into Thursday evening, Kavanaugh could take comfort in passing his biggest test. If Republicans stick together he is almost certain to be confirmed while minority Democrats face their own challenge in keeping the votes of red state senators with tough re-election races in their column. Booker's document fight Thursday's hearing featured another bitter showdown between Democrats who are furious at the failure of the White House to hand over tens of thousands of key documents on time or at all, and at restrictions on the public release of material that was made available. New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker said he was ready to risk expulsion from the Senate for making public documents pertinent Kavanaugh's time as a top White House aide to President George W. Bush, but the GOP mocked him for grandstanding ahead of a possible 2020 run -- saying it had already cleared the emails for release. In a striking political gambit, Booker, backed up by Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, released emails -- which had been designated as \"committee confidential\" -- that reference Kavanaugh's position on racial profiling and thoughts on Roe v. Wade dating from his time as a White House official under Bush. Booker, who as a potential 2020 presidential candidate had an incentive to make a splash in the hearing, said he took the action as an act of \"civil disobedience.\" \"I understand the penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate. ... I openly invite and accept the consequences of my team releasing that email right now,\" Booker said. \"This is about the closest I'll probably ever have in my life to an 'I am Spartacus' moment,\" he added. Republican Sen John Cornyn warned Booker that releasing documents marked \"committee confidential\" would break Senate rules. \"Running for president is not an excuse for violating the rules of the Senate,\" the Texas Republican said. Later Thursday, Bill Burck, a lawyer who oversaw the process of providing Bush administration documents, undercut Booker's grand gesture, saying that the material in question had been cleared on Wednesday night at the request of the senator's staff. \"We were surprised to learn about Senator Booker's histrionics this morning because we had already told him he could use the documents publicly. In fact, we have said yes to every request made by the Senate Democrats to make documents public,\" Burck said in a statement. The office of Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, also said that senators, including Booker, were notified \"before they spoke today\" that the restrictions on the documents had been waived. Booker, however, insisted he was in the right, saying he read from the documents aloud in the hearing on Wednesday night long before they were cleared at around 4 a.m. Democrats have repeatedly complained that the White House is withholding tens of thousands of documents relevant to the nomination and wants many more that have been provided released to the public. The New Jersey senator also said he doubted Cornyn would follow through on his threats to enforce Senate discipline against him. \"I think he's like a lot of bullies are: a lot of talk, no action,\" Booker said. North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis took exception to his Democratic colleague's tactics. \"Certainly in the six hours between the time that email hit your email box and the theatrics that happened in this chamber today you could have actually found out that you didn't have to be Spartacus, you didn't have to go interact with civil disobedience, you got what you wanted,\" Tillis said. The schoolyard taunts underlined how the hearing, ahead of what appears to be Kavanaugh's likely confirmation, has become another battlefield in the vicious partisanship and complete lack of trust between the parties that is wracking Washington at a critical moment of the Trump era Booker's intervention followed a set of glowing reviews from liberals for another potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, who late Wednesday night appeared to discomfort Kavanaugh with a series of questions designed to find out with whom he had discussed special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. Harris returned to the question on Thursday evening, saying that she had been working on \"reliable information\" that Kavanaugh had a conversation about the probe with someone from Kasowitz Benson Torres, the law firm founded by Trump's personal attorney Marc Kasowitz. Kavanaugh had sidestepped the question on Wednesday, so Harris asked him again and he replied \"the answer's no.\" Earlier, the firm said in a statement to CNN there had been no such discussions. Harris did not disclose the \"reliable information\" on which she based her questions. JUST WATCHED Senator challenges Kavanaugh on Mueller probe Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Senator challenges Kavanaugh on Mueller probe 02:55 2003 email shows Kavanaugh discussing Roe In another flashpoint development, a previously unreleased 2003 email from Kavanaugh, while he was an official in the Bush White House, shows him raising the point of whether Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the right to an abortion, was settled law of the land. In the internal White House email, obtained by CNN, Kavanaugh wrote: \"I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe v. Wade as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so.\" \"The point there is in the inferior court point,\" Kavanaugh wrote, responding to a draft op-ed that had been circulated for edits between lawmakers and White House staff. The draft, meant to be submitted under the name of \"high-profile, pro-choice\" women in support of a Bush judicial nominee, had said that \"it is widely understood accepted by legal scholars across the board that Roe v. Wade and its progeny are the settled law of the land.\" During the confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Kavanaugh said: \"As a general proposition I understand the importance of the precedent set forth in Roe v. Wade.\" Trump said during his campaign that he would appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe. In recent years, Supreme Court nominees have gotten through their confirmation hearings by refusing to say how they would rule on what they say is a hypothetical future case on the issue. The New York Times first reported the email. Throughout the contentious hearing, now in its third day, Kavanaugh has tried to give political questions -- especially those related to Trump and his potential legal woes -- a wide berth. On Wednesday he insisted that \"no one is above the law\" but declined to say whether a sitting president must respond to a subpoena. Senate Democrats have suggested that Kavanaugh could be biased in favor of the President and worry that his views on the primacy of executive power could help Trump evade legal scrutiny. Booker warned that given Trump's frequent attacks on the Justice Department there was a \"shadow over the independence of the judiciary\" and said it was understandable for some Americans to wonder whether a nominee picked by the President would owe loyalty to him or had been nominated to shield him from a criminal investigation. \"My only loyalty is to the Constitution,\" Kavanaugh responded. \"I have made that clear, I am an independent judge.\" Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more Senators Dispute Status Of Released Documents As Questioning Of Kavanaugh Wraps Up Enlarge this image toggle caption Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Updated at 10:55 p.m. ET Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh weathered another long day of questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday. He was pressed once again for his views on presidential power. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., sought a promise from Kavanaugh that he would be willing to serve as a check on the president who nominated him. \"Give us some reassurance about your commitment to the democratic institutions in this country, in the face of a president who seems prepared to cast them aside,\" Durbin said. \"Whether it's voter suppression, the role of the media \u2014 case after case, we hear this president willing to walk away from the rule of law in this country.\" \"No one is above the law,\" Kavanaugh replied. \"I've made clear in my writings that a court order that requires a president to do something or prohibits a president from doing something under the Constitution or laws of the United States is the final word in our system.\" Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, complained that the Supreme Court had been unduly deferential to President Trump this summer when it upheld his travel ban, despite what she called the administration's \"obviously bogus\" justification. She pressed Kavanaugh on when the high court should question a president's national security claims. \"National security is not a blank check for the president,\" Kavanaugh said, pointing to a number of cases in which the court had overruled the administration. \"Even in the context of wartime, the courts are not silenced. Civil liberties are not silent.\" Kavanaugh told lawmakers he is so committed to judicial independence, he stopped voting in national elections after he became a judge. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., again asked Kavanaugh if he'd ever spoken with anyone at the law firm of Trump's personal attorney Marc Kasowitz about special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, renewing a line of questioning she'd opened Wednesday night. \"The answer is no,\" Kavanaugh said. As he's done throughout the hearing, Kavanaugh declined to answer a series of questions from Harris about issues that might come before the high court, including abortion, same-sex marriage and immigration. The White House issued a statement late Thursday praising Kavanaugh. \"Through long hours and days of questioning, Judge Kavanaugh consistently reinforced his firm belief in the bedrock principles of judicial independence and the rule of law,\" deputy press secretary Raj Shah said in the statement. Kavanaugh was asked repeatedly during the televised hearing about whether he would support opening the Supreme Court to TV cameras. He promised to keep an open mind, but said he would also want to consider the views of the eight current justices. Thursday's session began with Democrats on the committee in open revolt over the handling of documents from Kavanaugh's tenure in the George W. Bush White House. Some documents have been withheld altogether. Others have been provided to the committee on \"confidential\" terms, meaning senators can see them but they can't be made public. Democrats object that the confidential label has been applied to a wide swath of records, many of which contain no personal or sensitive information. They also complain that classification decisions were made by former President Bush's attorney, William Burck, a former deputy of Kavanaugh's. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., released some of the confidential documents Thursday morning. Hirono also released \"confidential\" documents, drawing a stern rebuke from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who called them \"irresponsible and outrageous.\" \"This is no different from the senator deciding to release classified information,\" Cornyn said Thursday morning. \"No senator deserves to sit on this committee, or serve in the Senate, in my view, if they decide to be a law unto themselves and willingly flout the rules of the Senate and the determination of confidentiality and classification.\" Read the documents released by Sen. Hirono here and the documents released by Sen. Leahy here. For all the theatrics on both sides, the debate over documents fizzled by Thursday afternoon, once it became clear their release had been authorized by Bush's attorney overnight. \"We cleared the documents last night shortly after Senator Booker's staff asked us to,\" Burck said in a statement. \"In fact, we have said yes to every request made by the Senate Democrats to make documents public.\" And an aide to Grassley told NPR that \"counsels for the senators who requested waivers last night/this morning for particular documents were notified that their requests had been honored beginning at around 3:50 this morning.\" But a spokesperson for Hirono said the senator was not informed that the documents released by her office Thursday morning had been approved to be made public. It is not clear whether Booker knew the documents he released had already been approved before his statements Thursday morning at the beginning of the hearing \u2014 when he said that his decision to release the documents was a form of civil disobedience and that he was aware he was risking expulsion from the Senate for making the documents public. \"Cory said this morning that he was releasing committee confidential documents, and that's exactly what he's done,\" Booker spokeswoman Kristin Lynch said in an email to NPR. \"Last night, he was admonished by Republicans for breaking the rules when he read from committee confidential documents. Cory and Senate Democrats were able to shame the committee into agreeing to make last night's documents publicly available, and Cory publicly released those documents as well as other committee confidential documents today. And he'll keep releasing them because Republicans are hiding Brett Kavanaugh's record from the American people.\" Enlarge this image toggle caption Jacquelyn Martin/AP Jacquelyn Martin/AP The documents released by Booker include a batch of emails concerning racial profiling, affirmative action and other race-conscious government programs. In a 2002 email, Kavanaugh wrote that security procedures adopted in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks should ultimately be race-neutral, though he acknowledged that developing such procedures could take time. Others in the White House suggested racial profiling might be legally justified if it enhanced security. In a 2001 email, Kavanaugh addressed a legal challenge to an affirmative action program within the Department of Transportation. \"The fundamental problem in this case is that these DOT regulations use a lot of legalisms and disguises to mask what in reality is a naked racial set-aside,\" he wrote. Kavanaugh had sidestepped questions from Booker on Wednesday night about the circumstances in which government can and cannot use race-conscious measures to address past discrimination. He conceded that hopes he expressed nearly two decades ago for a color-blind society have not been fulfilled. \"We see on an all-too-common basis that racism still exists in the United States of America,\" Kavanaugh said. \"Our long march to racial equality is not over.\" Separately, The New York Times reported on leaked emails from the \"confidential\" file. One is an email drafted by Kavanaugh in 2003, in which he questioned whether the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion should be described as \"settled law of the land.\" Pressed on that email by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., on Thursday, Kavanaugh explained he was simply summarizing views of legal scholars and not offering his own view. On Wednesday, Kavanaugh said he understands the weight that many people attach to Roe. But he declined to say whether that case was properly decided. Throughout the hearing, Kavanaugh has avoided commenting on Trump's behavior, despite urging from Senate Democrats. \"I'm not going to get within three zip codes of a political controversy,\" he said Thursday, when Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., asked him about Trump's attacks on judges, including Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. \"I've spoken about my respect and appreciation for the eight justices on the Supreme Court,\" Kavanaugh said. \"I know they're all dedicated public servants who have given a great deal to this country.\" Barring surprises, Kavanaugh appears likely to win confirmation in time to take his place alongside those eight justices when the Supreme Court begins its fall term next month. Not seeing the video? Click here.", "source": "news_summ", "evaluation": "rouge"}
{"instructions": ["Please summarize these news articles."], "outputs": ["\u2013 If you live in America, there\u2019s a good chance you\u2019re shoveling snow today\u2014or will be soon\u2014but beware: The dreaded chore can actually kill you. How to avoid such a tragic fate? Well, for starters, keep your per-shovel load to 24 pounds or less. Beyond that, however, the recommendations get muddled, notes Timothy Noah on Slate: Shovels that make it easier to gather the snow make it harder to lift the snow, and vice versa. There is one obscure shovel supposedly better suited to both parts of the job, but good luck finding one in a hardware store. A few other things will lessen your risk: Don\u2019t start shoveling while snow is still falling (it\u2019s colder, so you\u2019ll put additional strain on your heart); don\u2019t bundle up too much (getting too hot isn\u2019t good, either); and don\u2019t drink coffee (it increases your heart rate) or hot cocoa (who knows why?) right before shoveling. If that all sounds like too much trouble, \u201cwait till someone younger or poorer than you knocks on your door and offers to shovel your walk for $20 or $30,\u201d Noah recommends. \u201cDelegate. The economy will benefit and your cardiologist will thank you.\u201d"], "input": "Hand Grips Clinically Proven Beneficial for Prevention of Low Back Injuries. Don't let snow shovelling be a pain in your back. Welcome to MOTUS. We manufacture hand grips that offer arthritis and back pain relief and reduce the risk of repetitive strain injuries including Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and tendinitis. Motus grips are a snow shovel accessory that make snow shovels easier to work with. Use the D-grip and the T-grip on shovels, scoops, pushers and roof rakes. The ergonomic design adjusts to any stature, short or tall, left or right-handed. The D-grip mounts mid-way down the handle and gives lifting leverage to the forward hand. The T-grip mounts at the upper end of the handle and gives pushing and pulling control to the back hand. In combination, they optimize their mechanical advantage. There are two main actions that take place when working with snow shovels: Lifting is involved in the use of snow and scoop shovels. Biomechanically, lifting involves the body as a third class lever. Adding the D-grip mid-way down the shovel handle moves the fulcrum to the lower hand, transferring the effort to the long end of the shovel, making it a first class lever. With increased leverage, the user may now lift a heavier load with greater ease. Pushing & Pulling is involved in the use of snow pushers and roof rakes. Adding the D-grip mid-way down the handle improves posture by allowing the user to stand taller with less back bend. Limb alignment and hand position with the D-grip are more neutral, reducing the risk of repetitive stress injury. Neutral limb alignment and hand position also reduce fatigue and blisters. Adding the T-grip handle at the upper end allows a greater range of motion. A straight line of force from the shoulder to the grip opens the space between the shoulders for good posture and reduced risk of back and muscle strain. Neutral limb alignment and hand position help reduce arthritis and back pain. A Case Study Assessment of MOTUS Power-Grip Products by Dean Kriellaars, Ph.D., University of Manitoba, School of Medical Rehabilitation May 20, 1992 I. Description Straight Grip (T-grip) The straight grip provides a fixed hand placement at right angle to the implement shaft. D-ring Handle (D-grip) The d-ring handle provides a hand placement site, which is slightly displaced from the implement shaft. The d-ring can be positioned at any angle relative to the shaft but is typically positioned close to a right angle to the shaft. II. Method A pseudo-static, biomechanical assessment of the straight grip Power-Grip product was undertaken in case study fashion for a simple shoveling task. The Newtonian equations for static equilibrium were developed to estimate the trunk joint moment required to hold a load with and without the straight hand-grip. A dynamic and EMG analysis was not undertaken. III. Results for the Straight Grip A. This hand-grip permits the wrist angle to remain in a near neutral position in the ulnar/radial plane. The amount of ulnar deviation is limited to a maximum of 10 degrees as compared to 35 degrees (near the end of range of motion) without the use of the straight grip. In lifting with an implement, the wrist can undergo maximum ulnar deviation during a specific period. This results in compression of the tissues located on the ulnar side of the wrist (the ulnar nerve, blood supply, carpal ligaments, tendons, etc.) and tension in the radially located tissues. Prolonged or repetitive loading of a joint at the end of range of motion can be deleterious to the tissues. In the mid-range of a joint, the muscles can operate efficiently to bear the load, however, in the end of range of motion, the passive tissues bear a disproportionate amount of the load since the muscles are in a compromised position. The decreased ulnar deviation resulting from the use of the straight grip is beneficial to the structures in and about the wrist. B. The hand-grip requires the forearm to be in a pronated position. Without the use of the straight grip, the forearm would be in a supinated position. This positioning influences the set of muscles recruited to perform the task. Most notably, with the forearm in a supinated position, the biceps brachii can operate to control the amount of supination and is in an advantaged position to aid in elbow flexion. When the straight grip is used, the forearm is positioned in pronation. This positioning results in a different muscle strategy to be employed during the lifting task. The biceps brachii is positioned in a relatively lengthened position and the forearm extensors and forearm supinators are required to control the degree of pronation. The difference in lifting with the straight grip represents a substitution of muscles required to perform the task. An electromyographical analysis would be required to establish the precise muscle activation pattern. This may limit the amount of elbow flexion used to perform the task enabling the user to incorporate larger trunk and lower limb musculature. C. The change in wrist position and forearm pronation results in an increased shoulder abduction angle (5-10 degrees). The change in wrist position requires the shoulder to be abducted. The lifting task normally involves the use of shoulder abductors. When the straight grip is used the starting angle for the abduction movement is greater. The change in joint angle would alter the muscle activation pattern required to perform the task. It is possible to speculate that the supraspinatus muscle, which is claimed to account for the first 5 degrees of abduction, would not be involved in the abduction when the straight grip is employed, instead the larger deltoid muscles would be primarily involved. This may result in a decreased likelihood of tendinitis (or similar disorder) of the intrinsic shoulder muscles. This speculation would have to be examined with electromyographical analysis. D. The change in upper limb kinematics (joint angles) due to the hand-grip reduces the trunk flexion angle in the neighborhood of 5 degrees. The kinematics of the upper limb holding on to the straight grip allows the trunk to remain in a more upright position during a lifting task. This results in a decreased effort from the extensor muscles of the hip and back since they do not have to work as hard to hold up the weight of the trunk. These muscles do not have to work as hard since there is i) a decrease in the moment of the weight of the upper body due to a decrease in the moment arm, and ii) a decrease in the moment of the weight of the load (that being lifted) due to a decrease in the moment arm are (the perpendicular distance from the line of action of the weight force acting vertically downward to the specific axis of rotation, say the L4 vertebral axis). This decrease in the moment of the load and upper body weight would be in the order of 5%. For repetitive tasks this small decrease would result in substantial energy savings and may result in less cumulative trauma. E. The change in upper body kinematics (joint angles) allows the load borne by the implement to be carried closer (about 5 cm) in the para-sagittal plane to the joint axes of rotation, most notable the hip and lumbar vertebral axes, as well as the upper limb axes (shoulder and elbow). Similar to point D., when the lifted load is carried closer to the body this results in a decrease in the moment arm of the load relative to the body's axes of rotation (hip, lumbar, shoulder, etc.). The decrease in moment arm reduces the tendency of the load to rotate downward which proportionately relieves the muscles from having to rotate the load upward. The magnitude of this effect is between 3 and 5 %. The overall reduction in load arising from the decrease in trunk angle and the closer load carrying is near 10%. This is a substantial amount, not only for repetitive tasks, but also for a single execution of a task. This would be beneficial for prevention and rehabilitation of low back injuries. F. The hand-grip did not result in an observable change in lower limb kinematics. The method employed in this study did not permit accurate evaluation of lower limb kinematics. A video motion analysis would be required for this purpose. G. The hand-grip constrains the user to a specific set of lifting postures. This constraint arises from the fact that the user must hold the grip and since the grip is fixed on the implement shaft the user's upper limbs are required to maintain a fixed geometry during lifting. Any task executed repetitively results in specific muscle fatigue, as such it may be beneficial to allow the user to rest or the freedom to adopt different postures to perform the same task which results in a substitution of non-fatigued muscles for the fatiguing muscles. This factor is primarily related to user understanding of proper lifting concepts and is not actually limited by the straight grip (i.e. changing the position of the straight grip periodically). H. The straight grip was found to fit any of the 14 different implements tested independent of: 1. material (plastic, metal or wood), 2. shaft diameter 3. the presence of water (rain). The straight grip was found to loosen or tighten somewhat with variations in temperature. The user would be advised to check that the grip is secure before each use. I. The hand-grip reduces the potential for blister formation. The kinematics of lifting without the hand-grip involves movement of the hand relative to the shaft resulting in skin surface shear which leads to blistering. With the use of the straight grip the magnitude of skin surface shear may be less which would result in a decrease in blister formation. CASE STUDY ASSESSMENT SUMMARY \"hand-grip permits the wrist angle to remain in a near neutral position\"...\"beneficial to the structures in and about the wrist.\" \"enabling the user to incorporate larger trunk and lower limb musculature.\" \"decreased likelihood of tendinitis (or similar disorder) of the intrinsic shoulder muscles\" \"remain in a more upright position during a lifting task\"...\"substantial energy savings and may result in less cumulative trauma.\" \"The overall reduction in load arising from the decrease in trunk angle and the closer load carrying is near 10%. This is a substantial amount, not only for repetitive tasks, but also for a single execution of a task. This would be beneficial for prevention and rehabilitation of low back injuries.\" \"The hand-grip reduces the potential for blister formation.\" SIGN UP FOR OUR FREE NEWSLETTER and BECOME ELIGIBLE FOR PRODUCT DISCOUNTS. Our informative newsletter is packed with facts and insights into ergonomics. Subscribers also receive periodic discounts on our ergomomic grips. To subscribe, enter your email address and check the box below to have your address added to our mailing list. We promise NEVER to give your address to third parties. You may unsubscribe at any time. E-mail address: Comment: Options: Add my address to the mailing list click here to visit Ergonomic Garden Tools Privacy Policy T-grip Only $20.00 Mail any 25 grips for $25 D-grip Only $20.00 Mail any 25 grips for $25 \"Would it kill you to shovel the front walk?\" A monster snowstorm raging from New Mexico to Maine raises this question afresh. Typically it's posed by a woman standing with hands on hips and assuming a Thurberesque mien as she gazes down on a man exercising his thumb on the remote but otherwise in repose. The correct answer: \"It might.\" Snow-shovel design may not rank up there with the Three Gorges Dam as an engineering challenge, but it kills more than 10 times as many people each year. My Slate colleague Juliet Lapidos has observed that the 1,200 annual heart-failure deaths attributed to blizzards represent only about 0.3 percent of all annual deaths from heart disease. But that's a lot more people than die from watching a football game (though that poses health risks too). You can say all these shovelers should exercise more, and that's certainly true. But such advice is of little help to a sedentary soul whose doorstep is suddenly buried in a four-foot drift. Advertisement The science of shoveling was invented by the Progressive Era efficiency expert (and father of Taylorism) Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor observed laborers shoveling varying weights and concluded that the shovel load with which \"a first class man would do his biggest day's work\" was about 21 pounds. That's remarkably close to the current recommendation from Canada's Center for Occupational Health and Safety (keep per-shovel snow loads below 24 pounds). At the Bethlehem Steel works in Pennsylvania, Taylor gave out shovels specifically designed to hold 21 pounds\u2014small ones for shoveling iron ore, big ones for shoveling ash\u2014and made \"thousands of stop-watch observations\" to calculate the most efficient shoveling method. Taylor's purpose was not to preserve workers' health but to maximize output; by following his recommendations, Bethlehem was able to increase the daily weight shoveled by each laborer from 16 to 59 tons. But because physical endurance was a necessary component to maximizing output, Taylor's shoveling method also reduced wear and tear on the human body. \"[T]his is not nigger driving,\" Taylor said (that's how Progressives talked in 1911); \"this is kindness; this is teaching; this is doing what I would like mighty well to have done to me if I were a boy trying to learn how to do something.\" He recommended that workers press the forearm hard against the upper part of the right leg, just below the thigh \u2026 take the end of the shovel in your right hand and when you push the shovel into the pile, instead of using the muscular effort of your arms, which is tiresome, throw the weight on the body of the shovel \u2026 [T]hat pushes your shovel in the pile with hardly any exertion and without tiring the arms in the least. Reading Taylor's recommendations, one is struck by two significant changes in American life. One is that 100 years later African-Americans are considered human beings whose physical well-being concerns society (at least in theory) as much as that of Caucasians. The other change is that, even taking into account that Taylor's subjects were all experienced manual laborers, people must have had much stronger backs back then. Like Slate on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. Like This Story", "source": "news_summ", "evaluation": "rouge"}
{"instructions": ["Please summarize these news articles."], "outputs": ["\u2013 Breweries across the US are joining forces to raise money for those affected by the deadliest, most destructive wildfire in California history. More than 1,000 beermakers will brew batches of Resilience Butte County Proud IPA, with 100% of the proceeds going to Camp Fire relief efforts, USA Today reports. The fundraiser is being spearheaded by Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., which is headquartered in Chico, Calif., an area that was threatened by the Camp Fire, which burned more than 153,000 acres, destroyed some 19,000 buildings, and killed at least 85 people in Butte County earlier this month. Sierra Nevada brewed its batch of Resilience IPA on Tuesday, founder Ken Grossman said in a statement, and the brewer will make it available in late December. \u201cWe know that the rebuilding process will take time, but we\u2019re in this for the long haul,\u201d Grossman says. \u201cOur hope is to get Resilience IPA in taprooms all over the country to create a solid start for our community\u2019s future.\u201d (Check out participating breweries here.) While the Camp Fire, which was fully contained as of Sunday, left the Sierra Nevada brewery unscathed, it did destroy the homes of 15% of the company\u2019s employees, KRCR reports. Initially, the brewer was hoping to get 500 other breweries on board to make Resilience IPA, spokesman Robin Gregory says, adding that they have been \u201cabsolutely blown away\u201d by the response. Overall, the company expects the effort to produce about 8.6 million pints. Resilience is described as a \u201cclassic\u201d West Coast-style IPA (here\u2019s the recipe for homebrewers). (This man handed out $1,000 checks to Camp Fire victims.)"], "input": "(Packaged in cans by Sierra Nevada, and draught from amazing brewers across the country. Available late December!) When the Camp Fire started in the hills above our Chico brewery on November 8, 2018, it soon became the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. The fire burned more than 153,000 acres, killed at least 85 people, and destroyed more than 13,000 homes. Many of our employees and community members were severely impacted by this tragic event. In the days following the fire, we announced plans to brew Resilience Butte County Proud IPA, a fundraiser beer for Camp Fire relief. We committed to brewing the beer and donating 100% of the sales to the Sierra Nevada Camp Fire Relief Fund, aimed at long-term community rebuilding support. And we asked every brewery in the country to do it with us. We sent out the \u201cbat signal\u201d calling our friends in the industry, asking our suppliers to donate ingredients, asking other breweries (our competitors) to donate their time and labor costs, and asking our wholesalers and retailers to carry the beer for free. It was a big ask, and we never could have anticipated the response. More than 1,400 breweries signed up to brew Resilience. Our suppliers donated ingredients to every brewery nationwide. Wholesalers and retailers agreed to carry the beer and donate every dollar they received. All of them agreed to do this for free to benefit people they had never met. In all, Resilience Butte County Proud IPA should hit the market in mid-late December more than 17,000 barrels\u2014or 4.2 million pints\u2014strong. Every dollar Sierra Nevada receives will go to those impacted by the Camp Fire. Thank you to the brewing community. Thank you to our suppliers. Thank you to our wholesalers and retailers. And thank you to every single customer who is helping us rebuild our Butte County community\u2014one pint at a time. Brewers | Malt Suppliers | Hop Suppliers | Wholesalers Resilience Night When: December 20th Where: Your favorite participating brewery Please join us for Resilience Night! On Thursday, December 20, we\u2019ll raise a glass with the 1,400+ breweries around the world brewing Resilience Butte County Proud IPA, our fundraiser beer for Camp Fire relief. Head to your local participating brewery to try their version of Resilience IPA\u2013every dollar spent on Resilience will benefit those impacted by the Camp Fire. Together, we can raise more than $10 million to rebuild Butte County. Untappd We are excited to announce that, starting December 15th, Untappd is participating in the release of Resilience IPA by offering its users a limited edition badge that can be earned by checking in to ANY Resilience IPA FROM ANY of the breweries that are officially participating. Not an Untappd user? Join today! Where to get Resilience!? Cans Resilience IPA is packaged in cans by Sierra Nevada. The beer is starting to ship now. It will take some time for it to get from us, to the wholesalers, to the retailers. The amount of time depends on several factors, but distance is the main determiner. You can use our beer locator to find retailers nationwide that have it. The locator is updated continuously, so check back often. Find Resilience IPA at Retail Draught Resilience IPA is available on draught from more than 1,400 breweries. You can use the brewer map below to locate participating breweries, and visit them for a pint! Find Resilience IPA on Draught Brewers Thank you to the more than 1,400 breweries around the world who have so graciously volunteered to brew Resilience and donate 100% of the sales. Our brewing community never ceases to amaze us, and we\u2019re proud to work alongside you. Map for mobile Brewer list sorted by state Homebrewers can participate too, with the Resilience IPA homebrew recipe! (updated 1/10/19) 10 Barrel Brewing Co 10 Barrel Brewing Company 10 mile brewery 1188 Brewing Company 1781 Brewing Co. 1850 Brewing Company 1912 Brewing Company 1940\u2019s Brewing Company 21st Amendment 25 West Brewing 26 Degree Brewing Company 2nd Shift Brewing 2Toms Brewing Co. 3 Bridges Brewing 3 Floyds Brewing Co 3 Sheeps Brewing Co 3 Stars Brewing Company 4 Hands Brewing Co 4 Noses Brewing Company 42 North Brewing Company 49th State Brewing Company 5 Alarm Brewing Co 515 Brewing Company 612Brew 7 Devil\u2019s Brewing company 7Sisters Brewing Company 7venth Sun Brewery 8 Bit Brewing Company 8th Wonder Brewery 902 Brewing Co Abita Brewing Company AC Golden Accomplice Beer Company Acopon Brewing Company Adobe Creek Brewing Adroit Theory Brewing Ahnapee Brewery Akasha Brewing Company Akronym Brewing Alameda Island Brewing Company Alamo Beer Co Aldus Brewing Co. / B\u2019s of the Back Rose Ale Industries AleCraft Brewery AleSmith Brewing Company All Rise Brewing Co. 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Christian Moerlein Brewing Co. Chubby Squirrel Brewing Co Cigar City Brewing CINDER BLOCK BREWERY Cinderlands Beer Co Cisco Brewers Cismontane Brewing City Built Brewing Company Claimstake Brewing Clandestine Brewing Claremont Craft Ales Climate City Brewing Company Cloudcroft Brewing Co. Clouds Brewing Coal Mine Ave Brewing Company Cobblehaus Brewing Co. Coelacanth Brewing Columbia Kettle Works Columbus Brewing Co Common Roots Brewing Company Common Space Brewery Commonhouse Aleworks Community Beer Co. Component Brewing Company Comrade Brewing Concrete Beach Brewery Confluence Brewing Company Congregation ales Contrary Brewing Co. Conversion Brewing Cool Beerwerks COOP Ale Works Cooperage Brewing Company CooperSmith\u2019s Pub & Brewing Co. Copper pig brewery Llc Copper State Brewing Co. 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Wild Mind Artisan Ales Wild Ride Brewing Willimantic Brewing Company Willow Rock Brewing Compa WISEACRE Brewing Company Wiseacre Brewing Company Wissahickon Brewing Company Wolf Creek Brewery Wolf Tree Brewery Wolf\u2019s Ridge Brewing Woodbury Brewing Company Wooden Robot Brewery Woodsboss Brewing Company Woodstock Inn Brewery Woody\u2019s Brewing Co. Wooly Pig Farm Brewery Working Man Brewing Company Wormtown Brewery Worth Brewing Company Worthy Brewing Wren House Brewing Co Wynwood Brewing Co Xicha Brewing Co. Yakima Craft Brewing Co Yazoo Brewing YeeHaw Brewing Yolo Brewing Company Zed\u2019s Beer Zero Gravity Craft Brewery Zeroday Brewing Company Zone 9 Brewing Company Zwei Brewing CO Malt Suppliers Thank you to our malt suppliers who have generously donated malt to breweries across the country to brew Resilience! Hop Suppliers Thank you to our hop suppliers who have generously donated hops to breweries across the country to brew Resilience! Wholesalers Thank you to our wholesalers who have graciously offered to carry Resilience and donate 100% of the sales to the Sierra Nevada Camp Fire Relief fund! Hensley Beverage Company - Phoenix, AZ Silver Eagle Distributors - Houston, TX Empire Distrubutors of NC, Inc. - Wilmington, NC Empire Distrubutors of NC, Inc. - Durham, NC Premium Distributors of Virginia - Chantilly, VA Premium Distributors of Washington DC - Washington, DC Markstein Sales Company - Antioch, CA Redding Distributing - Redding, CA Columbia Distributing - Santa Rosa, CA Del Reka Distributing - Eureka, CA DBI Beverage Company - Ukiah, CA Pepsi Mt. Shasta Bottling & Distributor - Mt. Shasta, CA Superior Products - Willows, CA Harbor Gardena - Gardena, CA Harbor Huntington Beach - Huntington Beach, CA Gate City Beverage - San Bernardino, CA Beauchamp Distributing - Compton, CA Columbia Distributing - Santa Rosa, CA Frank B. Fuhrer Wholesale - Pittsburgh, PA Cherokee Distributing - Knoxville, TN Tennessee Crown - Chattanooga, TN Mountain Beverage Company - Gypsum, CO High Country Beverage Western Slope - Grand Junction, CO B & K Distributing - Steamboat Springs, CO Briggs Distributing - Billings, MT Fun Beverage - Kalispell, MT Southern Glaze\u2019s Wine & Spirits of Nevada - Las Vegas , NV Romer Beverage - Kingman, AZ United Distributors Inc. - Smyrna, GA JJ Taylor Distributing - Florida - Tampa, FL Blue Ridge Beverage, Abingdon Division - Abingdon , VA Boening Brothers - Lindenhurst, NY Blue Ridge Beverage, Lynchburg Division - Lynchburg, VA Hayden Beverage - Boise, ID Kramer Beverage - Hammonton, NJ Shangy\u2019s - Emmaus, PA Odom Corporation - Spokane, WA K & L Distributors - Anchorage , AK Origlio Beverage - Philadelphia, PA Summit Beverage Missoula - Missoula, MT Serena Kirchner - Lancaster, PA Nappi Distributors - Gorham, ME L. Knife & Son - Kingston, MA Mancini Beverage Rhode Island - West Greenwich , RI Hartford distributors - Manchester, CT Quality Beverage - Taunton, ME Quality Beverage - Auburn, MA Mancini Beverage Northeast - Orange, CT G & G Beverage Distributors - Wallingford, CT Dixie Beverage - Winchester, VA Tri-Cities Beverage - Newport News, VA Crest Beverage - San Diego, CA Markstein Beverage San Marcos - San Marcos, CA Paradise Beverage - Waipahu, HI Quality Beverage - Auburn, MA Retailers Thank you to our retailers who have graciously offered to carry Resilience and donate 100% of the sales to the Sierra Nevada Camp Fire Relief fund! Find Resilience IPA at Retail Other Support These awesome folks are also contributing. Thank you! *Thank you to Resilience Brewing, a side project of Schilling Beer Co., for not only allowing us to call this beer Resilience, but for volunteering to brew it, too! CLOSE Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. is releasing a special edition Resilience Butte County IPA that will send 100% of the proceeds to Camp Fire relief efforts. USA TODAY Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. in Chico, California, in making Resilience Butte County Proud IPA, the proceeds of which will support Camp Fire relief efforts. (Photo: Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.) The deadliest fire in California history has set into motion the largest charitable collaboration ever among the nation's breweries, as more than 1,200 have signed on to brew a beer to raise funds for those affected by the Camp Fire in Northern California. Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., which is located in Chico, California, part of Butte County but west of the areas hardest hit by the fire, fed first responders and displaced residents during the fire and handed out clothing, too. But Ken Grossman, who founded the brewery in 1980, wanted to do more. He decided to brew a special beer, Resilience Butte County Proud IPA, and donate all the proceeds to the Sierra Nevada Camp Fire Relief Fund, which it seeded with a $100,000 donation. Then, Grossman asked other breweries across the U.S. to join in. \"We are working with malt, hop and yeast suppliers to provide raw ingredient donations to all participating breweries and are asking those breweries to donate 100 percent of their sales to the fund, as well,\" he said in the letter, a copy of which is posted online. \"We know that the rebuilding process will take time, but we\u2019re in this for the long haul,\" Grossman said. \"Our hope is to get Resilience IPA in taprooms all over the country to create a solid start for our community\u2019s future.\" More: Paradise fire survivor: 'This was my home before, and I want it to be again' More: Colossal California wildfire finally contained; grim search for bodies continues Collaboration is common among independent brewers, and so is the brewing of charity beers. But the response to Sierra Nevada's Camp Fire initiative has been historic. \"I\u2019m quite sure that it\u2019s both the largest-ever collaboration and the biggest industry charity ever,\" said Garrett Oliver, brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery. So far, more than 1,000 breweries have pledged to make their own batches of Resilience Butte County Proud IPA. \"This is a great idea spearheaded by a great indie craft brewing pioneer supporting a great cause,\" said Sam Calagione, co-founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Delaware, which brewed its batch of Resilience IPA and plans to serve it in late December. \"Our thoughts are with all of the brave folks who have helped navigate this challenging moment in Northern California and all of the families who have lost love ones,\" Calagione said. \"The craft brewing community has always been altruistic and mutually supportive, and giving back to our communities is one of the things we collectively do best.\" Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Delaware, is one of about 1,000 breweries joining Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. in making Resilience Butte County IPA, the proceeds of which will support Camp Fire relief efforts. (Photo: Dogfish Head Craft Brewery) Another of the participating breweries, Fort Collins, Colorado-headquartered New Belgium Brewing, recalls the hardship caused by the nearby 2012 High Park fire. The brewery's paperboard manufacturer, Graphic Packaging International, is located in Oroville, California, in Butte County. \u201cMany of their co-workers have tragically lost their homes, yet they\u2019re still coming to work every day. That is the definition of resilience, and we\u2019re happy to support recovery efforts in any way that we can,\" New Belgium Brewing CEO Steve Fechheimer said. New Belgium brewed its batch Tuesday and plans to make it available at its Fort Collins and Asheville tasting rooms in about two weeks. \"At New Belgium, we believe that business can be a force for good, and we think that ethos is shared throughout the craft beer community,\u201d Fechheimer said. Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. in Chico, California, in making Resilience Butte County Proud IPA, the proceeds of which will support Camp Fire relief efforts. (Photo: Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.) Sierra Nevada brewed its batch of more than 74,000 gallons on Tuesday and plans to release it Jan. 5, 2019. Sierra will can some of that beer and also make it available on draft. Other participating breweries will only sell Resilience IPA on draft, with most releases planned in late December and early January. Overall, the project should yield about 8.6 million pints of beer, the brewery estimates. Breweries joining include small, midsize and regional breweries nationwide as well as Anheuser-Busch-owned Goose Island Beer Co. and Miller Coors-owned Blue Moon Brewing Co. For a list of the breweries participating, go to Sierra Nevada's website. There's also a Google Doc on the brewery site, now listing more than 1,200 breweries on board. There are now more than 1,000 breweries listed on the @SierraNevada Resilience Butte County Proud IPA page. Pretty awesome reminder of how the brewing community can come together.https://t.co/Z2hB12BSlq \u2014 Bart Watson (@BrewersStats) November 27, 2018 \"Even as the beer industry has grown so much since the early days and become increasingly competitive, it is so wonderful to see hundreds of breweries nationwide rallying behind one of the movement's absolute most important pioneers,\" said Greg Engert, beer director for Neighborhood Restaurant Group in Alexandria, Virginia, which brewed a batch of the IPA at its Bluejacket brewery in Washington, D.C. Sierra Nevada's Grossman had hopes of sharing the beer's recipe with perhaps 500 breweries that would also make the beer and donate the proceeds. \"That was kind of his pie-in-the-sky goal; if we really work hard maybe we can hit 500 breweries, and we have doubled that number,\" brewery spokesperson Robin Gregory said. \"I know he wanted to raise at least seven figures, and it looks like, if our math is correct, it\u2019s going to be a bit higher than that.\" Stone is proud to be participating in @SierraNevada\u2019s #ResilienceIPA charity efforts. Sierra Nevada has come up with this new beer recipe and shared it with hundreds of other craft breweries to support those who now need our help after the fire. pic.twitter.com/31mZ1fjOw0 \u2014 Stone Brewing (@StoneBrewing) November 27, 2018 The Camp Fire took the lives of at least 85, with another 249 listed as missing, and destroyed nearly 19,000 buildings. About 15 percent of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. employees lost their homes in the fire, as did \"countless friends and family members as well,\" she said. Even before the fire was officially extinguished, the brewery had set up the relief fund. \"Once the fire is out, we will distribute all donated money to partner organizations that are dedicated to rebuilding and supporting the communities that have been affected,\" Grossman said in a note on the brewery's website, also signed by daughter Sierra and son Brian. The beer is a \"really classic\" West Coast-style India pale ale made with Centennial and Cascade hops, Gregory said. \"If it's going to be raising money to rebuild our community, we felt like it should be a taste of home. We wanted to go with that classic danky west coast IPA ... (that is) fresh, piney, citrusy, hop-heavy, and nice and bright.\" Thank you @ButteSheriff@KoryHonea for helping us brew Resilience Butte County Proud IPA today. And thank you to the 1,000+ breweries brewing #ResilienceIPA around the world. Grateful doesn\u2019t begin to describe it. #ButteStrong#ButteCountyProudpic.twitter.com/qFwSpIuOI6 \u2014 Sierra Nevada Beer (@SierraNevada) November 28, 2018 Follow USA TODAY reporter Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider. Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2018/11/28/camp-fire-relief-beer-brewed-sierra-nevada-and-1-000-others/2124195002/ November 21, 2018 The Camp Fire\u2013the most devastating wildfire in California\u2019s history\u2013has hit close to home for Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. While the Chico brewery was spared, many of Sierra Nevada\u2019s employees, patrons and neighbors lost everything as the Camp Fire ravaged northern Californian. To help raise much needed support for the recovery efforts, Sierra Nevada has created a beer called Resilience IPA. Sierra Nevada, along with many of its professional brewing peers, will be brewing and selling Resilience IPA with all proceeds donated to the Sierra Nevada Camp Fire Relief Fund through Golden Valley Community Bank Foundation. It is our hope that homebrewers will make a batch of Resilience IPA in solidarity with Sierra Nevada and pro breweries across the country. While we can\u2019t sell our creations and donate the proceeds, please consider donating to the Golden Valley Community Bank Foundation if you are able. Are you a professional brewery or homebrew shop that would like to join the cause? Contact Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. This recipe was provided by Sierra Nevada Brewing Company and scaled down from the original by Chip Walton of Chop and Brew. Brewery Name 10 Barrel Brewing Co 1781 Brewing Co. 2Toms Brewing Co. 3 Floyds Brewing Co 3 Sheeps Brewing Co 4 Hands Brewing Co 5 Alarm Brewing Co 8th Wonder Brewery 902 Brewing Co Alamo Beer Co 44 Aldus Brewing Co. / B's of the Back Rose 555 Centennial Avenue Hanover PA 17331 163646 https://untappd.com/brewery/163646 https://untappd.akamaized.net/site/brewery_logos/brewery-163646_a0468.jpeg Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico is brewing up another way to raise money for victims of the Camp Fire. On Tuesday, Sierra Nevada will begin brewing a special IPA to raise money for fire relief efforts. The beer is called Resilience Butte County Proud IPA The fire hit close to home for the company, with 15 percent of their employees losing homes in the fire. Sierra Nevada Founder Ken Grossman reached out to other small breweries across the country and shared the recipe. As of Tuesday morning, 998 breweries nationwide will be making and releasing the Resilience IPA and donating the proceeds. Sierra Nevada spokesperson Robin Gregory said they now hope to raise more than a million dollars through the fundraiser. \"We were absolutely blown away,\" Gregory said. \"We knew that we would probably get a good response, and were hoping, it would be great if we could get to 500 breweries committing. That was a big kind of pie in the sky goal, now it looks like we're going to have double that number.\" The company's hops and malt suppliers are donating the ingredients to make the beer, and Resilience Brewing Company gave Sierra Nevada permission to use the Resilience name temporarily. Sierra Nevada founder Ken Grossman has already donated $100,000 dollars to fire victims by establishing the Sierra Nevada Camp Fire Relief Fund supported through the Golden Valley Bank Community Foundation. The IPA will be released around the first of the year.", "source": "news_summ", "evaluation": "rouge"}
{"instructions": ["Please summarize these news articles."], "outputs": ["\u2013 Tarek El Moussa, the co-host of HGTV's real estate and renovation show Flip or Flop, is in remission after a battle with thyroid cancer and has an observant viewer to thank. Back in 2013, El Moussa visited a doctor about a lump that had appeared on his neck, but he was told it was benign. Then Ryan Read, a fan and trained nurse, spotted the growth while watching an episode. \"This is not a joke. I'm a registered nurse. I've been watching Flip or Flop. I noticed that the host Tarek has a large nodule on his thyroid, and he needs to have it checked out,\" she told the show's production company in an email, per the Independent. That email prompted El Moussa, then 31, to get a biopsy, which found he had thyroid cancer and that it had spread to his lymph nodes. El Moussa, who hosts Flip or Flop with his wife, Christina, says the pair got to meet Read when his case appeared on an episode of The Doctors. \"We actually ended up spending the day with her,\" he says, per Entertainment Tonight. \"It was just such an amazing experience to meet this person, because she stepped up and did what others probably wouldn't have done.\" He adds that without Read, he may never have known he had cancer, or \"by the time that I would've found out, it probably would've been in a much further stage.\" El Moussa had the tumor removed and underwent thyroid radioactive iodine therapy. Now \"I feel fantastic,\" he tells People. \"Every day that goes by, the odds of the cancer [recurring] decreases, so we're really excited for that.\" (This dog can also spot thyroid cancer.)"], "input": "1/37 Cannabis extract could provide \u2018new class of treatment\u2019 for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. Getty 2/37 Babies' health suffers from being born near fracking sites, finds major study Mothers living within a kilometre of a fracking site were 25 per cent more likely to have a child born at low birth weight, which increase their chances of asthma, ADHD and other issues Getty 3/37 Over 75,000 sign petition calling for Richard Branson's Virgin Care to hand settlement money back to NHS Mr Branson\u2019s company sued the NHS last year after it lost out on an \u00a382m contract to provide children\u2019s health services across Surrey, citing concerns over \u201cserious flaws\u201d in the way the contract was awarded PA 4/37 More than 700 fewer nurses training in England in first year after NHS bursary scrapped The numbers of people accepted to study nursing in England fell 3 per cent in 2017, while the numbers accepted in Wales and Scotland, where the bursaries were kept, increased 8.4 per cent and 8 per cent respectively Getty 5/37 Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Reuters 6/37 Long commutes carry health risks Hours of commuting may be mind-numbingly dull, but new research shows that it might also be having an adverse effect on both your health and performance at work. Longer commutes also appear to have a significant impact on mental wellbeing, with those commuting longer 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression Shutterstock 7/37 You cannot be fit and fat It is not possible to be overweight and healthy, a major new study has concluded. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even \u201cmetabolically healthy\u201d obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Images/iStockphoto 8/37 Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock 9/37 Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the \u2018napercise\u2019 class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Images/iStockphoto 10/37 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said. Getty 11/37 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Images/iStockphoto 12/37 Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. The study, conducted by the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, found that these children are actually more advanced than their peers as infants, but then fall behind by the time they hit their teenage years. Getty Images/iStockphoto 13/37 Cycling to work \u2018could halve risk of cancer and heart disease\u2019 Commuters who swap their car or bus pass for a bike could cut their risk of developing heart disease and cancer by almost half, new research suggests \u2013 but campaigners have warned there is still an \u201curgent need\u201d to improve road conditions for cyclists. Cycling to work is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer by 45 per cent and cardiovascular disease by 46 per cent, according to a study of a quarter of a million people. Walking to work also brought health benefits, the University of Glasgow researchers found, but not to the same degree as cycling. Getty Images 14/37 Ketamine helps patients with severe depression \u2018when nothing else works\u2019 doctors say Ketamine helps patients with severe depression \u2018when nothing else works\u2019 doctors say Creative Commons/Psychonaught 15/37 Playing Tetris in hospital after a traumatic incident could prevent PTSD Scientists conducted the research on 71 car crash victims as they were waiting for treatment at one hospital\u2019s accident and emergency department. They asked half of the patients to briefly recall the incident and then play the classic computer game, the others were given a written activity to complete. The researchers, from Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the University of Oxford, found that the patients who had played Tetris reported fewer intrusive memories, commonly known as flashbacks, in the week that followed Rex 16/37 Measles outbreak spreads across Europe as parents shun vaccinations, WHO warns Major measles outbreaks are spreading across Europe despite the availability of a safe, effective vaccine, the World Health Organisation has warned. Anti-vaccine movements are believed to have contributed to low rates of immunisation against the highly contagious disease in countries such as Italy and Romania, which have both seen a recent spike in infections. Zsuzsanna Jakab, the WHO\u2019s regional director for Europe, said it was \u201cof particular concern that measles cases are climbing in Europe\u201d when they had been dropping for years Creative Commons 17/37 Vaping backed as healthier nicotine alternative to cigarettes after latest study Vaping has been given an emphatic thumbs up by health experts after the first long-term study of its effects in ex-smokers. After six months, people who switched from real to e-cigarettes had far fewer toxins and cancer-causing substances in their bodies than continual smokers, scientists found Getty Images 18/37 Common method of cooking rice can leave traces of arsenic in food, scientists warn Millions of people are putting themselves at risk by cooking their rice incorrectly, scientists have warned. Recent experiments show a common method of cooking rice \u2014 simply boiling it in a pan until the water has steamed out \u2014 can expose those who eat it to traces of the poison arsenic, which contaminates rice while it is growing as a result of industrial toxins and pesticides Getty Images/iStockphoto 19/37 Contraceptive gel that creates \u2018reversible vasectomy\u2019 shown to be effective in monkeys An injectable contraceptive gel that acts as a \u2018reversible vasectomy\u2019 is a step closer to being offered to men following successful trials on monkeys. Vasalgel is injected into the vas deferens, the small duct between the testicles and the urethra. It has so far been found to prevent 100 per cent of conceptions Vasalgel 20/37 Shift work and heavy lifting may reduce women\u2019s fertility, study finds Women who work at night or do irregular shifts may experience a decline in fertility, a new study has found. Shift and night workers had fewer eggs capable of developing into healthy embryos than those who work regular daytime hours, according to researchers at Harvard University Getty Images/iStockphoto 21/37 Breakfast cereals targeted at children contain 'steadily high' sugar levels since 1992 despite producer claims A major pressure group has issued a fresh warning about perilously high amounts of sugar in breakfast cereals, specifically those designed for children, and has said that levels have barely been cut at all in the last two and a half decades Getty 22/37 Fight against pancreatic cancer takes \u2018monumental leap forward\u2019 Scientists have made a \u201cmonumental leap forward\u201d in the treatment of pancreatic cancer after discovering using two drugs together dramatically improved patients\u2019 chances of living more than five years after diagnosis. Getty Images/iStockphoto 23/37 Japanese government tells people to stop overworking The Japanese government has announced measures to limit the amount of overtime employees can do \u2013 in an attempt to stop people literally working themselves to death. A fifth of Japan\u2019s workforce are at risk of death by overwork, known as karoshi, as they work more than 80 hours of overtime each month, according to a government survey. Getty Images 24/37 Over-cooked potatoes and burnt toast \u2018could cause cancer\u2019 The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has issued a public warning over the risks of acrylamide - a chemical compound that forms in some foods when they are cooked at high temperatures (above 120C). Getty Images/iStockphoto 25/37 Cervical cancer screening attendance hits 19 year low Cervical screening tests are a vital method of preventing cancer through the detection and treatment of abnormalities in the cervix, but new research shows that the number of women using this service has dropped to a 19 year low. Getty/iStock 26/37 High blood pressure may protect over 80s from dementia The ConversationIt is well known that high blood pressure is a risk factor for dementia, so the results of a new study from the University of California, Irvine, are quite surprising. The researchers found that people who developed high blood pressure between the ages of 80-89 are less likely to develop Alzheimer\u2019s disease (the most common form of dementia) over the next three years than people of the same age with normal blood pressure. Getty Images/iStockphoto 27/37 Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty 28/37 'Universal cancer vaccine\u2019 breakthrough claimed by experts Scientists have taken a \u201cvery positive step\u201d towards creating a universal vaccine against cancer that makes the body\u2019s immune system attack tumours as if they were a virus, experts have said. Writing in Nature, an international team of researchers described how they had taken pieces of cancer\u2019s genetic RNA code, put them into tiny nanoparticles of fat and then injected the mixture into the bloodstreams of three patients in the advanced stages of the disease. The patients' immune systems responded by producing \"killer\" T-cells designed to attack cancer. The vaccine was also found to be effective in fighting \u201caggressively growing\u201d tumours in mice, according to researchers, who were led by Professor Ugur Sahin from Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany Rex 29/37 Green tea could be used to treat brain issues caused by Down\u2019s Syndrome A compound found in green tea could improve the cognitive abilities of those with Down\u2019s syndrome, a team of scientists has discovered. Researchers found epigallocatechin gallate \u2013 which is especially present in green tea but can also be found in white and black teas \u2013 combined with cognitive stimulation, improved visual memory and led to more adaptive behaviour. Dr Rafael de la Torre, who led the year-long clinical trial along with Dr Mara Dierrssen, said: \u201cThe results suggest that individuals who received treatment with the green tea compound, together with the cognitive stimulation protocol, had better scores in their cognitive capacities\u201d 30/37 Taking antidepressants in pregnancy \u2018could double the risk of autism in toddlers\u2019 Taking antidepressants during pregnancy could almost double the risk of a child being diagnosed with autism in the first years of life, a major study of nearly 150,000 pregnancies has suggested. Researchers have found a link between women in the later stages of pregnancy who were prescribed one of the most common types of antidepressant drugs, and autism diagnosed in children under seven years of age 31/37 Warning over Calpol Parents have been warned that giving children paracetamol-based medicines such as Calpol and Disprol too often could lead to serious health issues later in life. Leading paediatrician and professor of general paediatrics at University College London, Alastair Sutcliffe, said parents were overusing paracetamol to treat mild fevers. As a result, the risk of developing asthma, as well as kidney, heart and liver damage is heightened 32/37 Connections between brain cells destroyed in early stages of Alzheimer\u2019s disease Scientists have pinpointed how connections in the brain are destroyed in the early stages of Alzheimer\u2019s disease, in a study which it is hoped will help in the development of treatments for the debilitating condition. At the early stages of the development of Alzheimer\u2019s disease the synapses \u2013 which connect the neurons in the brain \u2013 are destroyed, according to researchers at the University of New South Wales, Australia. The synapses are vital for brain function, particularly learning and forming memories 33/37 A prosthetic hand that lets people actually feel through The technology lets paralysed people feel actual sensations when touching objects \u2014 including light taps on the mechanical finger \u2014 and could be a huge breakthrough for prosthetics, according to its makers. The tool was used to let a 28-year-old man who has been paralysed for more than a decade. While prosthetics have previously been able to be controlled directly from the brain, it is the first time that signals have been successfully sent the other way 34/37 Research shows that diabetes drug can be used to stop first signs of Parkinson\u2019s Scientists in a new study show that the first signs of Parkinson\u2019s can be stopped. The UCL study is still in its research period but the team are \u2018excited\u2019. Today\u2019s Parkinson\u2019s drugs manage the symptoms of the disease but ultimately do not stop its progression in the brain. PA 35/37 Drinking alcohol could reduce risk of diabetes A new study shows that drinking alcohol three to four days a week could reduce the risk of diabetes. Wine was found to be most effective in reducing the risk due to the chemical compounds that balance blood sugar levels. Getty Images 36/37 NHS agree, after loosing legal battle, to fund HIV prevention drug Having lost the legal battle over who was to pay for the drug the NHS have finally agreed to fund the HIV prevention treatment. National Aids Trust, whom Princess Diana supported, said that it was a \u2018pivotal moment\u2019. Getty Tarek El Moussa's cancer is in remission, and the HGTV Flip or Flop star may owe that good news to the alert eyes of a nurse who was watching the show. The 34-year-old, who co-hosts the home buying and renovation show with his wife, Christina, revealed to The Insider that his thyroid cancer was discovered by a fan who wrote in after noticing a lump on Tarek's neck. \"We actually ended up spending the day with her,\" Tarek said, revealing he met the nurse, Ryan Read, on an episode of The Doctors. \"It was just such an amazing experience to meet this person, because she stepped up and did what others probably wouldn't have done.\" \"I probably would've never known that I had cancer,\" he continued. \"And by the time that I would've found out, it probably would've been in a much further stage.\" PHOTOS: Stars We've Lost In Recent Years Tarek -- who was diagnosed in 2013 -- admitted that at the age of 31, the cancer diagnosis was particularly tough to take. \"It really hit me hard,\" he admitted. \"It hit my family hard, and it was just a really scary thing.\" Thankfully for the couple and their two children, Tarek's cancer is currently in remission and they remain cautiously optimistic for what may come. \"I feel fantastic. I'm in shape, I'm taking all my medicines, and I'm currently in remission,\" he said. \"Every day that goes by, the odds of the cancer [recurring] decreases, so we're really excited for that.\" WATCH: Renovation Meets Competition on HGTV's 'Beach Flip' Meanwhile, country singer Joey Feek is in hospice care after ending her cancer treatments in late October. Watch her remain brave in her last days in the video below. Flip or Flop's Tarek El Moussa After Thyroid Cancer Battle: 'I Have Slowed Down Quite a Bit' VIDEO: Why Jackie Collins Kept Her Breast Cancer Private for 6 Years Tarek El Moussa's thyroid cancer is in remission , but the Flip or Flop star is still dealing with lingering effects from his grueling battle \"I feel good, but I don't have the energy I used to have,\" El Moussa, 34, tells PEOPLE. \"The only thing is most days or like half the time I feel a little jetlagged. I'm really tired.\"The real estate guru, who stars alongside his wife Christina on their hit HGTV show, was blindsided by the shocking diagnosis after a fan emailed producers saying she noticed a lump on his neck prompting him to have a biopsy.After surgery revealed it was in fact cancer and it had spread to his lymph nodes, El Moussa then underwent thyroid radioactive iodine therapy.\"The last three years have been a pretty big challenge,\" says El Moussa.The couple, who are already parents to daughter Taylor, tried for more than two years to get pregnant with their son, going through two failed attempts at IVF \u2013 including one resulting in a miscarriage at eight weeks, just before Tarek\u2019s diagnosis.Now in remission, the new dad, who welcomed son Brayden James with Christina, 32, in August, is positive about his family's future.\"There is always that chance of reoccurrence but every year that goes by the odds of reoccurrence goes down so it's good,\" he says. \"I have slowed down quite a bit. Which is actually a good thing because I can actually relax now.\"Flip or Flop airs Thursdays (9 p.m. ET) on HGTV.For more on the El Moussa family, pick up next week's issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Nov. 23", "source": "news_summ", "evaluation": "rouge"}
{"instructions": ["Please summarize these news articles."], "outputs": ["\u2013 Well, that didn't take long: Less than two days after AMC's CEO gave an interview in which he suggested the theater chain might allow texting in its theaters, he's put out a statement backtracking. \"NO TEXTING AT AMC. Won't happen. You spoke. We listened. Quickly, that idea has been sent to the cutting room floor,\" reads a tweet Friday accompanying the statement. In the statement, CEO Adam Aron acknowledges the social media uproar that followed the texting news (USA Today has rounded up sample tweets from people who swore never to visit an AMC theater again) and says that the chain will not allow texting any time in the \"foreseeable future.\" One analyst tells CBS that Aron's actual idea might not have been as irksome as it sounded: \"One of the things keeping millennials away from the movies is that they need to be on their phones all the time. What [Adam Aron] wants to do is segregate different groups so that people don't want to be on their phones, i.e., older demographic groups, and those who do could be in different [auditoriums].\" And Aron tried to make that clear on Twitter Thursday, tweeting that AMC might simply do a test run on \"VERY FEW screens\" and would make sure it was done \"in a way we'd be TOTALLY confident ALL our guests will fully enjoy movie going experience.\" But that wasn't enough, garnering responses like, \"No! Not even one! What a stupid idea.\""], "input": "CLOSE On Friday the AMC movie theater chain scrapped its tone deaf idea of attracting millennials to its theaters by allowing movie-goers to text while watching films. AMC says the proposal it floated this week has been relegated to the cutting room floor. USA TODAY Texting-friendly screens \u2014 coming soon to AMC? (Photo: FREDERIC J. BROWN, AFP/Getty Images) AMC Theatres is changing the script on plans to allow moviegoers to text in the theater. The movie theater chain said Friday it will scrap plans to allow some theater patrons to text during movies, a move its CEO had said it considered to attract more millennials. \"We have heard loud and clear this is a concept our audience does not want,\" said AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron said in a statement. NO TEXTING AT AMC. Won't happen. You spoke. We listened. Quickly, that idea has been sent to the cutting room floor. pic.twitter.com/JR0fo5megR \u2014 AMC Theatres (@AMCTheatres) April 15, 2016 AMC's about-face follows an interview Aron gave to Variety, where he suggested making some theaters friendlier to moviegoers who want to use their smartphones while watching a movie. \"When you tell a 22-year-old to turn off the phone, don\u2019t ruin the movie, they hear please cut off your left arm above the elbow,\" said Aron. \"You can\u2019t tell a 22-year-old to turn off their cellphone. That\u2019s not how they live their life.\" On Twitter, reaction to Aron's idea was swift, and overwhelmingly negative. So, I guess I won't be seeing movies at AMC theatres. AMC CEO suggests he'll permit texting. https://t.co/nfqEd2rIAO \u2014 Augie Ray (@augieray) April 14, 2016 Do this and I'll NEVER go to an AMC again... AMC Entertainment CEO Open to Allowing Texting in Some Theaters https://t.co/ypLRuczbQF \u2014 Jeremy Conrad (@ManaByte) April 14, 2016 Aron says the company will focus on other plans to entice more consumers to go to the movies, including investing more than $1 billion to enhance theaters and their systems. \"With your advice at hand, there will be NO TEXTING ALLOWED in any of the auditoriums at AMC Theatres,\" he says. \"Not today, not tomorrow, and not in the foreseeable future.\" The harsh reaction to AMC's proposal falls in line with U.S. sentiment on when it's appropriate to use a smartphone. According to a national survey conducted by Pew Research Center, 95% of Americans polled said it's not OK to use a smartphone \"at the movie theater or other places where others are usually quiet.\" Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1Sf2MfC For years now, movie theater operators have been trying to dissuade their customers from chatting on cell phones or texting during shows. Some issue stern pre-show warnings that anyone caught texting or talking will be shown the door. It's not surprising then that the new chief executive and president of AMC Theaters, Adam M. Aron, caused a stir by suggesting that nation's second-largest movie theater company would consider the idea of making certain auditoriums \"more texting friendly\" in a bid to get millennials to go to the movies more often. \"When you tell a 22-year-old to turn off the phone, don't ruin the movie, they hear please cut off your left arm above the elbow,\" said Aron in an interview with Variety published online Wednesday. \"You can't tell a 22-year-old to turn off their cellphone. That's not how they live,\" said Aron, who hailed from outside the movie business before taking the reins of parent company AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC) in January. His suggestion that the company might revisit its stance on texting during shows didn't sit well with many movie buffs, who flooded AMC's social media accounts with objections. Some threatened to take their business elsewhere if AMC followed through with the idea. The company quickly responded to the backlash with the following post: \"Press reports we are considering test allowing texts in a very few screens. We know vast majority of audience wants no texting. If ever, we only would pursue this in a way that we can be totally confident ALL our guests will fully enjoy the movie-going experience at AMC.\" That still wasn't enough to quell critics on Twitter and Facebook. By Friday, AMC retreated with a company statement that included the following tweet: NO TEXTING AT AMC. Won't happen. You spoke. We listened. Quickly, that idea has been sent to the cutting room floor. pic.twitter.com/JR0fo5megR \u2014 AMC Theatres (@AMCTheatres) April 15, 2016 Aron, former CEO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts (HOT), is no doubt mulling new ways for AMC to woo an increasingly distracted and demanding audience. Rather than turn off their smartphones, many millennials would rather skip the theater altogether, or kick back at home and stream movies on their flat-screen TVs or mobile devices, via Netflix (NFLX) and other services. In 2015, America's 18- to 24-year olds represented 10 percent of the U.S. population and bought 14 percent of all movie tickets sold here, down from 16 percent in 2014, according to Stan Meyers, a Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst who covers media and entertainment companies. Teens, somewhat surprisingly, are going to the movies more often these days, as are those in the 60-plus set, as measured by their percentage contributions to overall ticket sales between 2014 and 2015, said Meyers. \"One of the things keeping millennials away from the movies is that they need to be on their phones all the time. What [Adam Aron] wants to do is segregate different groups so that people don't want to be on their phones, i.e., older demographic groups, and those who do could be in different [auditoriums],\" said Meyers. In his first few months as CEO, Aron has taken other steps to ensure that AMC, known as an innovator in the movie business, stays competitive in the face of demographic shifts and rapid technological change. In March, AMC announced that it has struck a deal to acquire Carmike Cinemas (CKEC), a merger that would create the world's largest chain of movie theaters. AMC, a subsidiary of Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group, is also reportedly close to a deal with the Screening Room, a startup that will offer new releases in the home, via a set-top box that transmits movies, for $50 per view, according to Variety. The venture is controversial within the movie business, but Variety reports that the Screening Room, backed by Sean Parker of Facebook (FB) and Napster fame, is seeking to pave its way by sharing its proceeds with distributors and providing customers with two free movie tickets per view, which would help boost concession sales for theater operators. But it's the texting controversy that has put AMC in the hot seat in the eyes of some moviegoers. That is perhaps not surprising given that some people feel so strongly about the etiquette surrounding cell phone use in theaters that the issue has sparked violence. In early 2014 an argument between two men in a theater in Wesley Chapel, Florida, over texting ended in a fatal shooting. Before the argument erupted, the man who was eventually shot was sending text messages to his daughter during the previews to the movie. Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more Adam Aron has been head of AMC Entertainment for less than four months, but in that short time he\u2019s already orchestrated one of the most significant deals in the country\u2019s history. In February, AMC announced that it has an agreement to buy Carmike, propelling it from being the second-biggest exhibitor in the country to the world\u2019s top movie theater chain. Aron has a diverse resume, having been head of Starwood Hotels and Resorts, CEO and co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team, chairman and CEO of Vail Resorts and president and CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line. But in an industry dominated by lifers, he is a newcomer to the exhibition space. That\u2019s giving him a willingness to experiment. He\u2019s pushing to expand AMC\u2019s food options, bolster its loyalty program and market more aggressively. Some moves may ruffle feathers. In a bid to attract younger, smartphone savvy consumers, Aron said he was open to making some theaters texting and mobile device-friendly. That may make him unpopular. When Regal Entertainment CEO Amy Miles mused in 2012 that theaters should consider experimenting with relaxing cellphone bans, the blowback was intense. Related Movie Tickets in London Hit $50 - Here's What They Cost Around the World 'The Terror' Season 2 Adds George Takei as Series Regular, Consultant Aron sat down with Variety during CinemaCon, the annual exhibition trade show unfolding this week in Las Vegas, to discuss the planned merger with Carmike, ticketing advances and Screening Room, the controversial start-up that wants to debut movies in the home the same day they hit theaters. You\u2019ve worked in a number of different industries, but you\u2019re new to exhibition. What perspective do you bring? Coming in fresh, it seems like there\u2019s lots of opportunity to propel revenues or to give consumers better experiences. AMC has been a leader in that regard for a few years now, but I think we will pick up even more of a reputation for that going forward. Already, having been here a couple of months, I know we can step up our marketing activity in a big way. The food that we serve in our theaters can be much more exciting than the current stable of chicken tenders, hot dogs, pizza, in addition to the standard soda and popcorn and candy. A lot of change is possible in this industry for the betterment of our shareholders and our customers. Marketing costs money. Why do you think it\u2019s worth the expense? Next year, assuming the Carmike acquisition is consummated, AMC is going to have in the neighborhood of $4 billion worth of revenue. It\u2019s almost irresponsible for a company with $4 billion worth of revenue on the line not to aggressively market. That\u2019s one of the things that can ensure that the $4 billion comes in, and that\u2019s one of the things that can ensure that more than $4 billion comes in. We wouldn\u2019t be spending for additional marketing if we didn\u2019t think we\u2019d be driving big revenue gains. Are there particular demographics that you plan to target with your marketing? We ought to be looking at three things. People who are already interested in movies and maybe in a big way, where if we up our game, we could get them to come to more movies. That\u2019s one of the reasons to have a better loyalty program with bigger, broader participation, because loyalty programs work. We can convince people who think they are seeing the most movies they can possibly see to go to more movies. The second is market share we can take from our competitors if we market AMC better than they market their theaters. And third, there does seem to be a consensus that there are pockets of consumers who do not see as many movies as other segments of the population and that we can be doing more to attract those people. Millennials come to mind. We need to reshape our product in some concrete ways so that millennials go to movie theaters with the same degree of intensity as baby boomers went to movie theaters throughout their lives. Would appealing to millennials involve allowing texting or cellphone use? Yes. When you tell a 22-year-old to turn off the phone, don\u2019t ruin the movie, they hear please cut off your left arm above the elbow. You can\u2019t tell a 22-year-old to turn off their cellphone. That\u2019s not how they live their life. At the same time, though, we\u2019re going to have to figure out a way to do it that doesn\u2019t disturb today\u2019s audiences. There\u2019s a reason there are ads up there saying turn off your phone, because today\u2019s moviegoer doesn\u2019t want somebody sitting next to them texting or having their phone on. Would you have a certain section for texting? That\u2019s one possibility. What may be more likely is we take specific auditoriums and make them more texting friendly. There are reports that you have signed a letter of intent to partner with Screening Room. What is your position on the company? I\u2019m not commenting publicly on Screening Room. I know it\u2019s a topic of hot debate amongst my brethren and sister-en, and I prefer to keep our counsel private right now. Until such time as Screening Room is real, we don\u2019t have to spend a lot of time talking about it publicly. How open are you to different distribution strategies that might modify the theatrical window? For all the talk of the Paramount test a year ago [Editor\u2019s note: AMC signed a deal that allowed the studio to debut two films on home entertainment early] and all the talk of Screening Room now, you may be surprised to hear that I think windows are very important. There\u2019s a lot of evidence that shorter windows put theatrical exhibitors at risk. Studios themselves benefit from posting big global box office numbers, which comes from theatrical distribution. So I start from a general premise that I\u2019m a big fan of windows. Having said that, I\u2019m also a big fan of experimenting and testing on everything that we do to see if there aren\u2019t alternative ways of doing business. I generally look at our 385 theaters as laboratories where we can test lots of different concepts without being afraid that there\u2019s going to be a cataclysmic, sky\u2019s falling in, if we do. I believe in innovation and being imaginative and forward thinking. There are some bedrock principles though. What are those bedrock principles? I have two bedrock principles and only two bedrock principles. One is that it\u2019s our burden as managers of the company that runs movie theaters to make sure that the moviegoing experience is as wonderful and spectacular as it possibly can be. The surest way to grow our business and protect it against erosion is to make sure that going to an AMC theater is a pleasing and memorable experience. The second is the consumer is king. Giving the consumer more choices, more amenities and price points. If we put ourselves in the head of our customer and design our theatrical experience and marketing activity to make their lives better, we\u2019ll have a successful company. Other than that we\u2019ll be flexible and willing to experiment. Where are you in terms of closing the Carmike acquisition? There are really only two hurdles to go through. Carmike\u2019s shareholders have to vote to approve the transaction. I expect that\u2019s going to be some time in June. I don\u2019t think they\u2019ve set a date. We need to get through the Justice Department approval, but we\u2019re optimistic that we will get through both of these hurdles. The contract we have with Carmike requires that we get through this a year from the date of the merger transaction, so early in the first quarter of 2017. It would be nice if we could get it done before that. What does the merger do for AMC? By putting together the No. 2 and No. 4 players in the industry, we create a new No. 1 player. There\u2019s extraordinary amounts of research that say that No. 1 players in industries are often the most successful players in their industries. If that turns out to be true, I\u2019d rather be the No. 1 player than the No. 2 player. Why did you recently sign a deal with ticketing app, Atom Tickets? They\u2019ve got a great social media platform where when you buy a ticket for a Wednesday night at 7:00 show, it sends a text message to all your friends asking if they want to go to the theater and sit next to you. They click a couple of buttons and your friend can buy a ticket at the same theater and showtime in a reserved seat. That\u2019s a great concept and that\u2019s one of the ways that we can make it easier for Millennials \u2014 who live on social media \u2014 to meet up with their friends in movie theaters. Megan Fox delivered a pizza to your seat during Paramount\u2019s CinemaCon presentation this week. What was that experience like? They took the pizza away as quickly as they delivered it. It was warm, and I could smell it, but we didn\u2019t get to eat it. I can\u2019t tell you how it tasted, but in terms of who and how it was delivered, I can tell you that\u2019s the best pizza delivery I\u2019ve ever had. Benvido \u00e1 casa! This timeline is where you\u2019ll spend most of your time, getting instant updates about what matters to you. Tweets not working for you? Hover over the profile pic and click the Following button to unfollow any account. Di moito cun pouco When you see a Tweet you love, tap the heart \u2014 it lets the person who wrote it know you shared the love. \u00danete \u00e1 conversa Add your thoughts about any Tweet with a Reply. Find a topic you\u2019re passionate about, and jump right in. Learn the latest Get instant insight into what people are talking about now. Get more of what you love Sigue m\u00e1is contas para recibir actualizaci\u00f3ns instant\u00e1neas dos temas que che importan. Find what's happening Mira as \u00faltimas conversas sobre calquera tema ao momento. Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more", "source": "news_summ", "evaluation": "rouge"}
{"instructions": ["Please summarize these news articles."], "outputs": ["\u2013 OJ Simpson's big moment has arrived. A hearing is underway at which he is trying to convince members of the Nevada Board of Parole that he should go free. \"I haven't made any excuses in the nine years that I've been here and I'm not trying to make an excuse now,\" said the 70-year-old Simpson early in the proceedings, per the AP. Later, he added, \"I am sorry that things turned out the way they did. I had no intent to commit a crime.\" He also appeared to stifle a sob in his appeal to the board. Simpson has been imprisoned since 2008 over an armed robbery and kidnapping case, but he and many legal analysts think that the board will vote to release him. If so, he's expected to be out on Oct. 1. The televised hearing is being livestreamed at various sites, including CNN. Per CNN, one of the first questions posed to Simpson by a board member in regard to the robbery, in which he and other men entered a Vegas hotel room to reclaim sports memorabilia, was, \"What were you thinking?\" Simpson called it a \"big mistake\" and emphasized that he wasn't armed. \"I would never pull a gun on anybody.\" He insisted that he learned only afterward that one of the men with him, who was \"behind me,\" brandished a gun. Another board member noted that he hadn't taken an alcohol-abuse program as he promised he would at his last hearing. Other Simpson quotes: \"I'm at a point in my life where all I want to do is spend as much time with my children.\" \"I've basically spent a conflict-free life.\" Daughter Arnelle Simpson said her father is \"remorseful,\" and she wants him to come home so they can \"move forward,\" adding, \"It's been hard.\""], "input": "(CNN) It was an oddly familiar O.J. Simpson that for a little while filled TV screens across America on Thursday. A Nevada parole board decided Simpson should be freed after the former NFL star apologized for his role in a 2007 armed robbery, said he'd been a model prisoner, and promised that he'd have no conflicts if released. Simpson's appearance before the board garnered wall-to-wall coverage from cable news shows, coverage that recalled the \"trial of the century,\" and the many months more than 20 years ago when it transfixed a nation. \"I've done my time,\" Simpson said. \"I've done it as well and as respectfully as I think anyone can.\" Now 70, Simpson's energy seemed little affected by his time behind bars. He was alert, engaged, and quick to smile, even letting out a hearty laugh when parole board Chairman Connie Bisbee accidentally said he was aged 90. \"I feel like it,\" he said. Simpson has served nine years of a nine-to-33-year sentence for an armed robbery and kidnapping in Las Vegas. He is expected to be released as early as October -- and said he plans to move to his home in Florida. An entire generation of Americans has come of age since Simpson seemed an almost inescapable public figure. But for one afternoon, it felt like 1995 again. That was the year he was acquitted of murder charges in the grisly slayings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Thursday's parole hearing followed renewed interest in his story, which was explored last year in the award-winning documentary \"O.J.: Made in America\" and the FX true-crime drama \"The People v. O.J. Simpson.\" Though it's been 22 years since the not guilty verdict, the murder trial's themes of criminal justice and race, trust in police, celebrity and domestic violence remain remarkably resonant in modern culture. \"We talk about O.J. as though the story is O.J.,\" journalist Celia Farber says toward the end of the \"Made in America\" documentary. \"The story is O.J. and us.\" Parole board vote unanimous For his part, Simpson seemed remarkably unaltered. He repeatedly avoided taking full responsibility for the Vegas crime. At one point, he said he had lived a \"conflict-free life,\" a statement that perhaps bemused anyone whose memory stretches back more than two decades. \"Juice,\" as he was known in his heyday, said associates misled him during the Vegas robbery and then turned on him in court. One of those associates is Tom Riccio. Simpson testified that Riccio is the one who called him, persuading him to take part in the robbery. Simpson said Thursday he regretted ever taking Riccio's call. But, according to Riccio, Simpson did a lot more than that. \"He should wish he didn't make all those calls after my call,\" Riccio told CNN. \"After he took my call he did a lot of things he shouldn't have done.\" Riccio added that Simpson was the one who orchestrated the robbery. \"He plotted it all and gathered up men with guns.\" Simpson said Riccio avoided punishment by throwing him under the bus. \"Unfortunately, they got a get-out-of-jail-free card when they said 'O.J. told me (to do it),'\" Simpson said. \"Nothing I can do about that.\" Sufficient remorse is not a relevant factor for parole, and Simpson ticked off several mitigating factors that made him a good candidate for release. He was discipline-free in prison, he has stable release plans, he has family and community support -- and, of course, he has no prior criminal convictions. The four parole board members voted unanimously to grant him parole, and board member Tony Corda said he was graded a \"low risk to reoffend.\" Simpson smiled, said \"thank you,\" and then put his head down for a few moments silently. O.J. Simpson wins parole after serving nine years for armed robbery and kidnapping https://t.co/di9NLhRSI6 https://t.co/G3ECaWR0u2 \u2014 CNN (@CNN) July 20, 2017 'My best friend' Simpson said in closing remarks that he had been a peacemaker in the prison and had been a model prisoner. \"I've spent nine years making no excuses about anything. I am sorry that things turned out the way they did. I had no intent to commit a crime.\" The parole hearing featured testimony from Arnelle Simpson, the former football great's oldest daughter, who said her father was \"my best friend and my rock.\" Simpson also said he has taken two \"Alternative to Violence\" classes, which he said was \"the most important course any person in this prison can take.\" In addition, robbery victim Bruce Fromong testified that he had forgiven Simpson for the crime at that Las Vegas hotel room, and advocated for his release. Simpson had also been described by authorities as a model prisoner at Lovelock Correctional Center, a medium-security prison in the Nevada desert. The robbery Simpson and an associate were convicted of kidnapping, armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon for attempting to steal pieces of Simpson sports memorabilia at gunpoint. At his 2008 sentencing, the Hall of Fame running back said he went to the room in the Palace Station Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas to reclaim family heirlooms and other personal items that had been taken from him. He also claimed he didn't know his associates were armed. \"I wasn't there to hurt anybody,\" Simpson said. \"I just wanted my personal things, and I realize now that was stupid of me. I am sorry.\" The case, which featured a colorful cast of seedy characters, secret recordings and a Las Vegas heist, read like a low-budget parody of \"Ocean's Eleven,\" CNN wrote at the time Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson O.J. Simpson reacts after learning he was granted parole at Lovelock Correctional Center on Thursday, July 20, in Lovelock, Nevada. Simpson is serving a nine-to-33-year prison term for a 2007 armed robbery and kidnapping conviction. Click through the gallery to see moments from the notable life of the former football and media star. Hide Caption 1 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson As a University of Southern California running back, Simpson accepts the Heisman Trophy in December 1968. Hide Caption 2 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Simpson, pictured in 1974, was a running back for the Buffalo Bills from 1969 to 1977. Hide Caption 3 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Simpson with his wife, Marguerite Whitley, his daughter Arnelle and son Jason, circa 1974. The couple were married from 1967 to 1979. They had another daughter, Aaren, who died as a toddler in a drowning accident. Hide Caption 4 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Simpson in action during a Buffalo Bills game against the New York Jets. Hide Caption 5 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Simpson married Nicole Brown Simpson in 1985. Here the couple appears at a Los Angeles nightclub around 1976. Hide Caption 6 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Coach Lou Sabin and O.J. Simpson Hide Caption 7 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Simpson branched out into acting. He appears with Bill Murray, left, Laraine Newman and Garrett Morris in a \"Saturday Night Live\" skit in 1978. Hide Caption 8 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson As a running back for the San Francisco 49ers, Simpson carries the ball against the Oakland Raiders during a preseason game circa 1978. Hide Caption 9 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Simpson becomes a commentator on ABC's \"Monday Night Football\" in the mid-'80s. He appears with Joe Namath, left, and Frank Gifford. Hide Caption 10 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Simpson and his children attend Nicole Brown Simpson's funeral in June 1994. Hide Caption 11 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Ronald Goldman was slain with Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson on June 12, 1994. Hide Caption 12 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson In footage seen on TV screens around the world, police chase a white Ford Bronco with a fugitive Simpson inside on the Los Angeles freeways on June 17, 1994. The Bronco eventually returned to Simpson's home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, and he surrendered to police on murder charges in the deaths of his ex-wife and Ronald Goldman. Hide Caption 13 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Simpson's mug shot after his arrest on murder charges. Hide Caption 14 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Fans leave signs of support outside Simpson's house in June 1994. Hide Caption 15 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Lead defense attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. and prosecutor Marcia Clark face off during a hearing in the murder trial that riveted a nation. Hide Caption 16 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson \"If it doesn't fit, you must acquit\" was defense attorney Cochran's mantra during the trial. Here, Simpson tries on a leather glove tied to the crime scene at his murder trial on June 15, 1995. Hide Caption 17 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Simpson cheers with his attorneys F. Lee Bailey, left, and Johnnie Cochan Jr. on October 3, 1995, after being found not guilty of killing Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Though cleared of criminal charges, a civil jury later slapped the former football star with a $33 million wrongful death judgment, and attorneys for the Goldman family have doggedly pursued his assets. Hide Caption 18 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Simpson continued to encounter legal problems, including a \"road rage\" trial in the Miami area in October 2001. He was found not guilty on charges stemming from a traffic altercation with another motorist. Hide Caption 19 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Simpson appears in court with attorneys Gabriel Grasso, left, and Yale Galanter before sentencing in the sports memorabilia case in December 2008 in Las Vegas. Simpson contended he was retrieving personal items that had been stolen from him and were being sold as memorabilia. He later accused Galanter of having a conflict of interest and failing to mount an effective defense. Hide Caption 20 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson The Palace Station hotel room, the scene of Simpson's reported confrontation with sports memorabilia dealers, is displayed on a monitor during Simpson's trial in September 2008. Hide Caption 21 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Simpson embraces his sister, Carmelita Durio, while his friend Tom Scotto looks on in court after a guilty verdict was reached in October 2008. Simpson was convicted of leading a group of associates into a room at the Palace Station Hotel and Casino and using threats, guns and force to take back items from two dealers. Hide Caption 22 of 23 Photos: The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson Disgraced football star O.J. Simpson appears in court on May 13, 2013, seeking to get his robbery, assault and kidnapping convictions thrown out after spending more than four years in prison. He argued that bad legal advice led to his arrest and conviction in a confrontation with sports memorabilia dealers. His 2008 conviction came 13 years after his acquittal on murder charges in the deaths of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Hide Caption 23 of 23 Simpson's legal team argued that the nine-to-33-year sentence did not match the crime and that it was, in fact, a form of payback for his controversial acquittal in the deaths of Brown and Goldman. Even Bruce Fromong, a victim in the robbery, agreed. \"It wasn't about justice,\" Fromong said in \"O.J.: Made in America.\" \"They wanted the guy that got away with murder in 1994.\" Simpson has always denied he killed Brown and Goldman. Their families won a wrongful death civil judgment against him in 1997. At a parole hearing in 2013, Simpson said he regretted the Las Vegas kidnapping and robbery. \"I just wish I had never gone to that room. I wish I had just said, 'Keep it,' and not worry about it,\" he said. These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported \"No More 404\" sites. Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more", "source": "news_summ", "evaluation": "rouge"}
{"instructions": ["Please summarize these news articles."], "outputs": ["\u2013 Frat-house accidents and sexual assaults are getting so common they're impossible to ignore\u2014but how did it get this bad, and why does it keep happening? In an extensive Atlantic piece, Caitlin Flanagan looks at the history of fraternities and their myriad ways of avoiding legal obligations for what goes on behind closed doors. As Bloomberg reported, 60 students have died in frat-related incidents since 2005, a fact \"that is dwarfed by the numbers of serious injuries, assaults, and sexual crimes that regularly take place in these houses,\" writes Flanagan. She chronicles a few incidents, from a freshman girl's heinous rape at Wesleyan University to a young man who fired a bottle rocket out of his butt at Marshall University\u2014and the guy who fell off a deck videotaping it, and later sued Alpha Tau Omega for his injuries. To avoid financial ruin, fraternities have merged into \"vast national organizations\" that buy liability insurance, and they've created rules about alcohol consumption that are nearly impossible for party-lovers to follow\u2014so when the inevitable lawsuits come, frat members are considered at fault for breaking the rules. That means their soon-to-be-retired parents pay extensive legal bills, and parents' homeowners insurance often pays settlements. So why do universities allow this perilous environment to persist? Largely because fraternity dorms save schools \"untold millions of dollars\" in housing, writes Flanagan, and the frat-house party image helps lure students into expensive universities. To be fair, advocates also describe the positives\u2014like increased confidence, brotherhood, and leadership training. But parents should know the dangers: \"Until proven otherwise,\" a lawyer tells Flanagan, \"they all are very risky organizations for young people to be involved in.\" Click for her full piece."], "input": "After a freshman died from downing beer, rum and 151-proof liquor in an initiation ritual, California Polytechnic State University in 2010 banned fraternities from recruiting newly arrived students. Right away, the North-American Interfraternity Conference, which represents 75 national fraternities, jumped in. The Indianapolis-based trade group e-mailed and met with Cal Poly administrators, paid for a study that opposed the ban and spurred a three-year campaign by student leaders. It won, and the school lifted the restriction this year. One freshman, Charlie Ross, couldn\u2019t be happier about the opportunity to join a fraternity right away instead of waiting three months. \u201cYou\u2019ve got a group of guys who watch out for you when you\u2019re drinking,\u201d Ross, 18, said after unpacking his bags at freshman orientation on the San Luis Obispo campus. Related Stories: The university\u2019s turnabout shows how the Interfraternity Conference is blocking an approach that some higher education leaders say can save lives: postponing recruitment of freshmen, who account for a disproportionate number of fraternity-related deaths. The conference has opposed proposals at dozens of colleges to delay recruiting by a semester or a year. \u201cThese organizations were putting our freshmen at risk,\u201d said Shirley Tilghman, former president of Princeton University, which prohibited fraternity recruiting of freshmen, starting in the fall of 2012. \u201cThere is so much vulnerability in that first week, that first month as a freshman on a college campus -- of feeling lost. It leads to all kinds of decisions that you would not make if you had a little more time to find your way.\u201d Freshmen Deaths Princeton students who belonged to fraternities, especially freshmen, were more likely to be hospitalized because of drinking, said Tilghman, who stepped down as president in June. Of 60 fraternity-related deaths nationwide since 2005, 24, or 40 percent, were of freshmen, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Universities often are susceptible to the Interfraternity Conference\u2019s pressure to recruit freshmen because Greek life appeals to applicants and many alumni donors remain loyal to their fraternities. Only 80 of about 800 U.S. campuses with fraternities defer recruiting, according to the conference. Fraternity membership surged to 327,260 in 2011 from 253,148 in 2005. National fraternities and affiliated foundations generated $185 million in student dues and other revenue in 2010-2011, up 24 percent from 2005-2006, tax records show. Binge Drinking White male fraternity members drink more heavily than any other group on campus, and published research suggests that the youngest students are most likely to engage in binge drinking, according to Aaron White, program director for college and underage drinking prevention research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. \u201cThe first couple of months of school are a particularly vulnerable time for students with regard to heavy drinking,\u201d White said. \u201cDelaying rush makes a lot of sense.\u201d Founded in 1909, the Interfraternity Conference joined the industry\u2019s political arm, known as FratPAC, in fighting against a federal anti-hazing bill last year. The group has stepped up advocacy on campuses, especially against recruiting restrictions. With its encouragement, fraternity leaders at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland rejected a 2011 plan to defer recruiting freshmen. At the University of Colorado at Boulder, the conference backed fraternities\u2019 decision to operate without university recognition, reducing their access to campus facilities, rather than accept deferred recruitment and live-in advisers. Lawsuit Threat \u201cThe NIC was not supportive\u201d of university rules, said Deb Coffin, Colorado vice chancellor for student affairs. The University of Central Florida this year lifted a recruitment moratorium, which had been prompted by excessive drinking at fraternities and sororities, after the Interfraternity Conference threatened to sue the school for violating students\u2019 freedom-of-association rights. The national group\u2019s threat didn\u2019t influence the university, said Maribeth Ehasz, a Central Florida vice president. Of the 24 fraternity-related freshman deaths since 2005, 15 occurred during and after recruiting events, including hazing and initiation rituals. At Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, freshman David Bogenberger died last year of alcohol poisoning after a fraternity initiation rite known as \u201cMom and Dad\u2019s Night.\u201d With other pledges, Bogenberger moved from room to room at the chapter house answering questions from members and downing vodka before passing out, court records show. Fraternity Measures Fraternities have taken steps to protect students, including banning alcohol at recruiting events and supporting sanctions against violators, said Peter Smithhisler, president of the Interfraternity Conference. While drinking deaths at fraternities are \u201cheartbreaking,\u201d many students drink too much, not just at fraternities, he said. Keeping out freshmen merely puts a \u201cBand-Aid\u201d on a broader campus problem, he said. It also deprives freshmen of opportunities at fraternities for leadership, career networking and charitable work, he said. \u201cIt would be a travesty if the fraternity experience were not available for the development of these young men,\u201d Smithhisler said. \u201cWe believe in the fraternity experience and its ability to really transform an undergraduate into better men, better citizens, better doctors, teachers, engineers.\u201d Fraternities\u2019 Lifeblood If colleges are allowed to restrict recruitment for a semester or a year, they could next extend the delay through sophomore year, or even shut down fraternities, as some liberal arts institutions have done, he said. \u201cRecruitment is the lifeblood for every chapter,\u201d Smithhisler said. Carson Starkey, whose death prompted the Cal Poly ban, hadn\u2019t planned on joining a fraternity until he arrived at the public university of 19,000 on the central California coast. One out of six undergraduates there participate in Greek life. The clean-cut, curly-haired 18-year-old from Austin, Texas, knew no one on campus, and the opportunity to bond with fraternity brothers soon appealed to him. He chose to pledge Sigma Alpha Epsilon, one of the largest fraternities, with chapters on almost 230 campuses in the U.S. and Canada. \u2018Drink Up\u2019 While it included other activities such as a scavenger hunt, much of Sigma Alpha Epsilon\u2019s initiation revolved around alcohol. After Thanksgiving, fraternity members summoned Starkey and 16 other pledges to the garage of an off-campus house for \u201cBrown Bag Night.\u201d Tarps covered couches to protect them from vomit, according to court testimony. Pledges sat in a circle, with a trash can at the center. At 10:30 p.m., each pledge was given a brown bag with cans and bottles of alcohol. \u201cDrink up, finish by midnight,\u201d said one upperclassman, according to court testimony. Starkey\u2019s bag had two 24-ounce cans of Steel Reserve beer, a 16-ounce can of Sparks alcoholic energy drink, and a fifth of rum he was to split with another pledge, one of several Sigma Alpha Epsilon brothers who bought the liquor testified. Pledges also shared a bottle of 151-proof Everclear, which is 75.5 percent alcohol. As members chanted \u201cPuke and Rally,\u201d Starkey emptied his bag in 20 minutes, court records show. Dirty Mattress After Starkey passed out, fraternity brothers debated whether to drive him to a hospital less than a mile away, members testified. They placed Starkey in a car and removed his Sigma Alpha Epsilon pin, so that doctors wouldn\u2019t know he was at a fraternity event. Then they changed their minds. Rather than go to the hospital, they brought him back in the house and left him on a dirty mattress, according to court records and Starkey\u2019s mother, Julia. Starkey died on Dec. 2, 2008, 71 days after starting college. He had a blood-alcohol content of 0.44, or about five times the legal limit, according to court testimony. Four fraternity brothers pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges related to hazing. They were sentenced to jail terms ranging from 30 to 120 days. The Starkeys sued Sigma Alpha Epsilon and several members for negligence, settling for at least $2.45 million, court records show. Sigma Alpha Epsilon is committed to \u201cproviding a meaningful, beneficial and safe experience\u201d for all members, the national fraternity said in a statement. Cal Poly barred Sigma Alpha Epsilon from campus until 2033 and considered eliminating fraternities. Instead, it stepped up oversight and decided in 2010 to delay freshman recruiting until January, the school\u2019s second quarter. \u2018Huge Pushback\u2019 Soon after the policy was announced, \u201cthere was a huge pushback\u201d from the fraternity industry, said Stephan Lamb, then the university\u2019s associate director of student life. Smithhisler and other Interfraternity Conference executives visited the school in 2010 to ask administrators to rescind deferred recruitment. \u201cThe hand-wringing has started\u201d among fraternity leaders about Cal Poly\u2019s limits on recruitment, Smithhisler wrote in a Jan. 12, 2011, e-mail to Lamb obtained through a request to the university under California\u2019s open-records law. The next month, the trade group sent industry experts to Cal Poly to conduct an in-depth assessment of the school\u2019s Greek system, according to university records. Typically, universities request such an evaluation and pay an $8,000 fee. In this instance, the conference covered the cost. Stealing, Drinking The report was hardly flattering. The assessment, prepared by fraternity executives, college administrators and a social worker, called Cal Poly\u2019s recruitment \u201cdehumanizing and superficial\u201d and said alcohol was \u201ca, and perhaps THE, defining factor\u201d of Greek life. \u201cHazing occurs in the men\u2019s chapters, particularly physical/strength endurance, stealing and drinking,\u201d it said. \u201cAlcohol plays a major role in the Cal Poly fraternity/sorority experience, especially within fraternity life.\u201d Still, the report called for an end to deferred recruitment because it runs \u201ccounter to a student\u2019s right to choose.\u201d The policy unfairly required fraternities, but not sororities, to postpone rush, according to the assessment. The national group worked through students, too. Andy Farrell, who headed Cal Poly\u2019s student fraternity group in 2010, said Smithhisler took him aside and \u201cmade it clear that the [Interfraternity Conference] stand is that deferred recruitment should not exist.\u201d Fighting Rules National fraternities urged their Cal Poly chapters to fight the new rule, said Michael Franceschi, another student leader at the time. When students organized, the conference supplied them with research and helped edit a paper arguing against deferred recruitment. \u201cWe\u2019d send them drafts of each section,\u201d said Jason Colombini, then a campus fraternity leader and now student body president. \u201cThey would tell us things to look into.\u201d Colombini said he acted on his own initiative, not the Interfraternity Conference\u2019s. Turnover at the top of Cal Poly aided the fraternity cause. Jeffrey Armstrong, who became Cal Poly\u2019s president in 2011, and Keith Humphrey, vice president for student affairs, sympathized with students\u2019 pleas, Colombini said. Unlike their predecessors, Armstrong and Humphrey had been in fraternities, and Armstrong met his wife through his membership in Alpha Gamma Rho. In June, Cal Poly announced it would abolish deferred recruiting at its 17 fraternities. In return, fraternity members agreed to register their parties, undergo alcohol education and submit to periodic reviews. About $100,000 in higher fees from fraternity members will fund a new university position monitoring Greek life. \u2018More Control\u2019 The university didn\u2019t bow to fraternity pressure, Humphrey said. It simply wanted fraternity and sorority recruitment on the same schedule. Deferred recruiting isn\u2019t a \u201csilver bullet,\u201d Armstrong said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to gain a lot more control\u201d through the agreement with fraternity members, Armstrong said. \u201cThere will be a lot more accountability.\u201d The Interfraternity Conference assured the university that fraternities had shown \u201chigher alcohol awareness.\u201d Humphrey agreed, saying that students are taking alcohol safety more seriously. \u201cWe\u2019re entering a different day,\u201d he said. Still, the number of people transported to the hospital by Cal Poly police because of alcohol doubled to 35, in 2012-2013, from 2008, the year Starkey died. The statistics don\u2019t indicate how many belonged to fraternities. The increase shows that students are more willing to call for help, said Martin Bragg, Cal Poly\u2019s director of health and counseling services. Lambda Cabana Since 2011, the university has disciplined nine fraternities, in most cases for alleged alcohol-related violations. After Lambda Chi Alpha\u2019s \u201cLambda Cabana\u201d beach volleyball tournament and charity fundraiser in April, three underage partygoers went to the hospital with alcohol poisoning, according to university records. The university suspended Lambda Chi activities. Lambda Chi Alpha said it hadn\u2019t organized any parties after the fundraiser, records show. Graham Garland, president of its Cal Poly chapter, declined to comment. The university later lifted the suspension because an investigation didn\u2019t support allegations against the fraternity, Humphrey said. In an editorial this month, the student paper, the Mustang News, said fraternities haven\u2019t changed their behavior since Starkey\u2019s death, and the administration made a mistake in letting them recruit freshman right away. \u201cCal Poly is opening the door for more trouble,\u201d the editorial said. Parents Troubled Carson Starkey\u2019s parents, while pleased with the alcohol education program, opposed ending deferred recruitment. They run a nonprofit group to raise awareness about alcohol poisoning. \u201cI find it troubling that they [fraternities] would be advocating against our efforts to try to save lives,\u201d said Julia Starkey, 52. Her son would be alive if recruitment came later, she said. \u201cI\u2019m 200 percent sure he wouldn\u2019t have joined,\u201d she said. \u201cHis core group of friends were outside the fraternity, but that didn\u2019t happen the first weeks of school.\u201d Fraternities are putting revenue ahead of safety, said his father, Scott Starkey, 54. \u201cIf you defer the recruitment of your members, you\u2019re deferring income, I get that,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re business people. But I also feel there\u2019s a human side.\u201d Welcoming Freshmen On a crisp late summer day during freshman orientation last month at Cal Poly, posters near dormitory entrances urged students to wear black wristbands with the name of the Starkeys\u2019 charity: \u201cAware Awake Alive.\u201d \u201cTake care of yourself,\u201d read the posters. \u201cTake care of your friends.\u201d Freshmen were divided over the new rush policy. Adam Massini, 18, from La Quinta, California, said it would be better to delay recruitment. \u201cFreshmen haven\u2019t had much experience with drinking and don\u2019t know their limits,\u201d said Massini, who is considering joining a fraternity to perform community service. Waiting isn\u2019t going to stop freshmen from drinking heavily, said Grant Caraway, a former star high school football quarterback from Granite Bay, California. \u201cSome guys are going to be stupid, no matter what,\u201d Caraway said. With formal recruiting weeks away, a banner hung outside the Lambda Chi Alpha house. In bold, block letters, it greeted freshmen: \u201cWelcoming You the Right Way Since 1979.\u201d While deferred recruiting gave freshmen more time to choose a fraternity, Lambda Chi now has no choice but to pursue them right away, said Joe Hare, 21, its vice president. \u201cIf all the fraternities do it, we can\u2019t wait,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s social suicide.\u201d To contact the reporters on this story: John Hechinger in Boston at jhechinger@bloomberg.net; David Glovin in New York at dglovin@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Golden at dlgolden@bloomberg.net One warm spring night in 2011, a young man named Travis Hughes stood on the back deck of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house at Marshall University, in West Virginia, and was struck by what seemed to him\u2014under the influence of powerful inebriants, not least among them the clear ether of youth itself\u2014to be an excellent idea: he would shove a bottle rocket up his ass and blast it into the sweet night air. And perhaps it was an excellent idea. What was not an excellent idea, however, was to misjudge the relative tightness of a 20-year-old sphincter and the propulsive reliability of a 20-cent bottle rocket. What followed ignition was not the bright report of a successful blastoff, but the muffled thud of fire in the hole. Also on the deck, and also in the thrall of the night\u2019s pleasures, was one Louis Helmburg III, an education major and ace benchwarmer for the Thundering Herd baseball team. His response to the proposed launch was the obvious one: he reportedly whipped out his cellphone to record it on video, which would turn out to be yet another of the night\u2019s seemingly excellent but ultimately misguided ideas. When the bottle rocket exploded in Hughes\u2019s rectum, Helmburg was seized by the kind of battlefield panic that has claimed brave men from outfits far more illustrious than even the Thundering Herd. Terrified, he staggered away from the human bomb and fell off the deck. Fortunately for him, and adding to the Chaplinesque aspect of the night\u2019s miseries, the deck was no more than four feet off the ground, but such was the urgency of his escape that he managed to get himself wedged between the structure and an air-conditioning unit, sustaining injuries that would require medical attention, cut short his baseball season, and\u2014in the fullness of time\u2014pit him against the mighty forces of the Alpha Tau Omega national organization, which had been waiting for him. Phil Toledano It takes a certain kind of personal-injury lawyer to look at the facts of this glittering night and wrest from them a plausible plaintiff and defendant, unless it were possible for Travis Hughes to be sued by his own anus. But the fraternity lawsuit is a lucrative mini-segment of the personal-injury business, and if ever there was a deck that ought to have had a railing, it was the one that served as a nighttime think tank and party-idea testing ground for the brain trust of the Theta Omicron Chapter of Alpha Tau Omega and its honored guests\u2014including these two knuckleheads, who didn\u2019t even belong to the fraternity. Moreover, the building codes of Huntington, West Virginia, are unambiguous on the necessity of railings on elevated decks. Whether Helmburg stumbled in reaction to an exploding party guest or to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ is immaterial; there should have been a railing to catch him. And so it was that Louis Helmburg III joined forces with Timothy P. Rosinsky, Esq., a slip-and-fall lawyer from Huntington who had experience also with dog-bite, DUI, car-repossession, and drug cases. The events of that night, laid out in Helmburg\u2019s complaint, suggested a relatively straightforward lawsuit. But the suit would turn out to have its own repeated failures to launch and unintended collateral damage, and it would include an ever-widening and desperate search for potential defendants willing to foot the modest bill for Helmburg\u2019s documented injuries. Sending a lawyer without special expertise in wrangling with fraternities to sue one of them is like sending a Boy Scout to sort out the unpleasantness in Afghanistan. Who knows? The kid could get lucky. But it never hurts\u2014preparedness and all that\u2014to send him off with a body bag. related story 18 U.S. Presidents Were Frat Boys \"Fraternity men make up 85 percent of U.S. Supreme Court justices since 1910, 63 percent of all U.S. presidential cabinet members since 1900, and, historically, 76 percent of U.S. senators and 85 percent of Fortune 500 executives ... Fraternities really do breed leaders\u2014a cohort of young men dedicated to being loyal, being knowledgeable, and embracing the skills of leadership success.\" Read the full story by Maria Konnikova College fraternities\u2014by which term of art I refer to the formerly all-white, now nominally integrated men\u2019s \u201cgeneral\u201d or \u201csocial\u201d fraternities, and not the several other types of fraternities on American campuses (religious, ethnic, academic)\u2014are as old, almost, as the republic. In a sense, they are older: they emanated in part from the Freemasons, of which George Washington himself was a member. When arguments are made in their favor, they are arguments in defense of a foundational experience for millions of American young men, and of a system that helped build American higher education as we know it. Fraternities also provide their members with matchless leadership training. While the system has produced its share of poets, aesthetes, and Henry James scholars, it is far more famous for its success in the powerhouse fraternity fields of business, law, and politics. An astonishing number of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, congressmen and male senators, and American presidents have belonged to fraternities. Many more thousands of American men count their fraternal experience\u2014and the friendships made within it\u2014as among the most valuable in their lives. The organizations raise millions of dollars for worthy causes, contribute millions of hours in community service, and seek to steer young men toward lives of service and honorable action. They also have a long, dark history of violence against their own members and visitors to their houses, which makes them in many respects at odds with the core mission of college itself. Lawsuits against fraternities are becoming a growing matter of public interest, in part because they record such lurid events, some of them ludicrous, many more of them horrendous. For every butt bomb, there\u2019s a complaint of manslaughter, rape, sexual torture, psychological trauma. A recent series of articles on fraternities by Bloomberg News\u2019s David Glovin and John Hechinger notes that since 2005, more than 60 people\u2014the majority of them students\u2014have died in incidents linked to fraternities, a sobering number in itself, but one that is dwarfed by the numbers of serious injuries, assaults, and sexual crimes that regularly take place in these houses. Many people believe that violent hazing is the most dangerous event associated with fraternity life, but hazing causes a relatively small percentage of these injuries. Because of a variety of forces, all this harm\u2014and the behaviors that lead to it\u2014has lately been moving out of the shadows of private disciplinary hearings and silent suffering, and into the bright light of civil lawsuits, giving us a clear picture of some of the more forbidding truths about fraternity life. While many of these suits never make it to trial, disappearing into confidential settlements (as did that of Louis Helmburg III, nearly two years after he filed his lawsuit) or melting away once plaintiffs recognize the powerful and monolithic forces they are up against, the narratives they leave behind in their complaints\u2014all of them matters of public record\u2014comprise a rich and potent testimony to the kinds of experiences regularly taking place on college campuses. Tellingly, the material facts of these complaints are rarely in dispute; what is contested, most often, is only liability. Far from being freakish and unpredictable events, fatal and near-fatal falls from fraternity-house roofs, balconies, windows, and sleeping porches are fairly regular occurrences across the country. I have spent most of the past year looking deeply into the questions posed by these lawsuits, and more generally into the particular nature of fraternity life on the modern American campus. Much of what I found challenged my beliefs about the system, assumptions that I came to see as grossly outdated, not because the nature of fraternity life has changed so much, but rather because life at the contemporary university has gone through such a profound transformation in the past quarter century. I found that the ways in which the system exerts its power\u2014and maintains its longevity\u2014in the face of the many potentially antagonistic priorities in contemporary higher education commanded my grudging respect. Fraternity tradition at its most essential is rooted in a set of old, deeply American, morally unassailable convictions, some of which\u2014such as a young man\u2019s right to the freedom of association\u2014emanate from the Constitution itself. In contrast, much of the policy governing college campuses today is rooted in the loose soil of a set of political and social fashions that change with the season, and that tend not to hold up to any kind of penetrating challenge. And this is why\u2014to answer the vexing question \u201cwhy don\u2019t colleges just get rid of their bad fraternities?\u201d\u2014the system, and its individual frats, have only grown in power and influence. Indeed, in many substantive ways, fraternities are now mightier than the colleges and universities that host them. The entire multibillion-dollar, 2,000-campus American college system\u2014with its armies of salaried professors, administrators, librarians, bursars, secretaries, admissions officers, alumni liaisons, development-office workers, coaches, groundskeepers, janitors, maintenance workers, psychologists, nurses, trainers, technology-support staffers, residence-life personnel, cafeteria workers, diversity-compliance officers, the whole shebang\u2014depends overwhelmingly for its very existence on one resource: an ever-renewing supply of fee-paying undergraduates. It could never attract hundreds of thousands of them each year\u2014many of them woefully unprepared for the experience, a staggering number (some 40 percent) destined never to get a degree, more than 60 percent of them saddled with student loans that they very well may carry with them to their deathbeds\u2014if the experience were not accurately marketed as a blast. They show up on campus lugging enormous Bed Bath & Beyond bags crammed with \u201cessentials,\u201d and with new laptop computers, on which they will surf Facebook and Tumblr while some coot down at the lectern bangs on about Maslow\u2019s hierarchy and tries to make his PowerPoint slides appear right side up. Many of these consumer goods have been purchased with money from the very student loans that will haunt them for so long, but no matter: it\u2019s college; any cost can be justified. The kids arrive eager to hurl themselves upon the pasta bars and the climbing walls, to splash into the 12-person Jacuzzis and lounge around the outdoor fire pits, all of which have been constructed in a blatant effort to woo them away from competitors. They swipe prepaid cards in dormitory vending machines to acquire whatever tanning wipes or earbuds or condoms or lube or energy drinks the occasion seems to require. And every moment of the experience is sweetened by the general understanding that with each kegger and rager, each lazy afternoon spent snoozing on the quad (a forgotten highlighter slowly drying out on the open pages of Introduction to Economics, a Coke Zero sweating beside it), they are actively engaged in the most significant act of self-improvement available to an American young person: college! Phil Toledano That all of this fun is somehow as essential as the education itself\u2014is somehow part of a benevolent and ultimately edifying process of \u201cgrowing up\u201d\u2014is one of the main reasons so many parents who are themselves in rocky financial shape will make economically ruinous decisions to support a four-year-residential-college experience for their children. There are many thousands of American undergraduates whose economic futures (and those of their parents) would be far brighter if they knocked off some of their general-education requirements online, or at the local community college\u2014for pennies on the dollar\u2014before entering the Weimar Republic of traditional-college pricing. But college education, like weddings and funerals, tends to prompt irrational financial decision making, and so here we are. Add another pesto flavor to the pasta bar, Dean Roland! We just lost another kid to online ed! That pursuing a bachelor\u2019s degree might be something other than a deeply ascetic and generally miserable experience was once a preposterous idea. American colleges came into being with the express purpose of training young men for the ministry, a preparation that was marked by a chilly round of early risings, Greek and Latin recitations, religious study, and strict discipline meted out by a dour faculty\u2014along with expectations of both temperance and chastity. Hardly conditions that would augur the current trillion-dollar student-loan balloon that hovers over us like a pre-ignition Hindenburg. But sexual frustration and homiletics would not last forever as the hallmarks of American college life. related story I Fought Back Against My College's Sexist Fraternity \"I was taken aback by the fact that these women would openly acknowledge what I thought we were too old to admit in college: These men were popular. And that made them powerful. And if we rocked the boat, we could be shunned.\" Read the full story by Meghan McCarthy In 1825, at Union College, in upstate New York (hardly a garden of earthly delights in the best of circumstances, but surely a gulag experience for those stuck at Union; imagine studying Thessalonians in the ass-cracking cold of a Schenectady February), a small group of young men came up with a creative act of rebellion against the fun-busters who had them down: the formation of a secret club, which they grandly named the Kappa Alpha Society. Word of the group spread, and a new kind of college institution was founded, and with it a brand-new notion: that going to college could include some pleasure. It was the American age of societies, and this new type fit right in. As Nicholas Syrett observes in his excellent history of white men\u2019s college fraternities, The Company He Keeps, these early fraternities were in every way a measure of their time. They combined the secret handshakes and passwords of small boys\u2019 clubs; the symbols and rituals of Freemasonry; the new national interest in Greek, as opposed to Roman, culture as a model for an emerging citizenry; and the popularity of literary societies, elements of which\u2013oratory, recitation, and the presentation of essays\u2014the early fraternities included. Fraternities also gave young college men a way of behaving and of thinking about themselves that quickly took on surprisingly modern dimensions. An 1857 letter that a Sigma Phi member named Jenkins Holland sent to one of his fraternity brothers suggests the new system was already hitting full stride: \u201cI did get one of the nicest pieces of ass some day or two ago.\u201d From the very beginning, fraternities were loathed by the grown-ups running colleges, who tried to banish them. But independence from overbearing faculties\u2014existing on a plane beyond the reach of discipline\u2014was, in large measure, the point of fraternity membership; far from fearing the opprobrium of their knock-kneed overlords, the young men relished and even courted it. When colleges tried to shut them down, fraternities asserted that any threat to men\u2019s membership in the clubs constituted an infringement of their right to freedom of association. It was, at best, a legally delicate argument, but it was a symbolically potent one, and it has withstood through the years. The powerful and well-funded political-action committee that represents fraternities in Washington has fought successfully to ensure that freedom-of-association language is included in all higher-education reauthorization legislation, thus \u201cdisallowing public Universities the ability to ban fraternities.\u201d An 1857 letter that a Sigma Phi sent to one of his fraternity brothers suggests the new system was already hitting full stride: \u201cI did get one of the nicest pieces of ass some day or two ago.\u201d Perhaps the best testament to the deep power of fraternities is how quickly and widely they spread. Soon after Gold Rush money began flowing into the newly established state of California\u2014giving rise to the improbable idea of building a great American university on the shores of the Pacific Ocean\u2014fraternity men staked their own claim: a campus in Berkeley had existed barely a year before the brothers of Phi Delta Theta arrived to initiate new members. The thing to remember about fraternities is that when Kappa Alpha was founded at Union, in all of the United States there were only 4,600 college students; fraternities exist as deeply in the groundwater of American higher education as religious study\u2014and have retained a far greater presence in the lives of modern students. In fairly short order, a paradox began to emerge, one that exists to this day. While the fraternities continued to exert their independence from the colleges with which they were affiliated, these same colleges started to develop an increasingly bedeviling kind of interdependence with the accursed societies. To begin with, the fraternities involved themselves very deeply in the business of student housing, which provided tremendous financial savings to their host institutions, and allowed them to expand the number of students they could admit. Today, one in eight American students at four-year colleges lives in a Greek house, and a conservative estimate of the collective value of these houses across the country is $3 billion. Greek housing constitutes a troubling fact for college administrators (the majority of fraternity-related deaths occur in and around fraternity houses, over which the schools have limited and widely varying levels of operational oversight) and also a great boon to them (saving them untold millions of dollars in the construction and maintenance of campus-owned and -controlled dormitories). Reader Responses Excerpts from comments posted to this story: \"My perspective as a fraternity member and former president of a 120 man chapter at a public university in the Midwest: Fraternity houses are inherently dangerous and fraternity houses are a hell of a lot of fun.\" \u2014Valyrian Steel \"Like Peter Pan trying to corral the lost boys, the job of fraternity president and his team is incredibly difficult and one that illuminates the arguments for and against the fraternity system.\" \u2014Joe \"Reform of the drinking laws would help the problems explored in this article a lot more than any realistic attack on the free association rights of young adults.\" \u2014C.M. \"This is a good article about why lawyers are horrible and destroy everything enjoyable in society.\" \u2014GregHood Read all comments Moreover, fraternities tie alumni to their colleges in a powerful and lucrative way. At least one study has affirmed what had long been assumed: that fraternity men tend to be generous to their alma maters. Furthermore, fraternities provide colleges with unlimited social programming of a kind that is highly attractive to legions of potential students, most of whom are not applying to ivy-covered rejection factories, but rather to vast public institutions and obscure private colleges that are desperate for students. When Mom is trying\u2014against all better judgment\u2014to persuade lackluster Joe Jr. to go to college, she gets a huge assist when she drives him over to State and he gets an eyeful of frat row. Joe Jr. may be slow to grasp even the most elemental concepts of math and English (his first two years of expensive college study will largely be spent in remediation of the subjects he should have learned, for free, in high school), but one look at the Fiji house and he gets the message: kids are getting laid here; kids are having fun. Maybe he ought to snuff out the joint and take a second look at that application Mom keeps pushing across the kitchen table. Will he be in increased physical jeopardy if he joins one of these clubs? The fraternity industry says no. When confronted with evidence of student injury and death in their houses, fraternities claim they are no worse than any other campus group; that they have become \u201ctarget defendants,\u201d prey to the avarice of tort lawyers excited by their many assets and extensive liability coverage. It is true that fraternity lawsuits tend to involve at least one, and often more, of the four horsemen of the student-life apocalypse, a set of factors that exist far beyond frat row and that are currently bringing college presidents to their knees. First and foremost of these is the binge-drinking epidemic, which anyone outside the problem has a hard time grasping as serious (everyone drinks in college!) and which anyone with knowledge of the current situation understands as a lurid and complicated disaster. The second is the issue of sexual assault of female undergraduates by their male peers, a subject of urgent importance but one that remains stubbornly difficult even to quantify, let alone rectify, although it absorbs huge amounts of student interest, outrage, institutional funding, and\u2014increasingly\u2014federal attention. The third is the growing pervasiveness of violent hazing on campus, an art form that reaches its apogee at fraternities, but that has lately spread to all sorts of student groups. And the fourth is the fact that Boomers, who in their own days destroyed the doctrine of in loco parentis so that they could party in blissful, unsupervised freedom, have grown up into the helicopter parents of today, holding fiercely to a pair of mutually exclusive desires: on the one hand that their kids get to experience the same unfettered personal freedoms of college that they remember so fondly, and on the other that the colleges work hard to protect the physical and emotional well-being of their precious children. But it\u2019s impossible to examine particular types of campus calamity and not find that a large number of them cluster at fraternity houses. Surely they have cornered the market in injuries to the buttocks. The number of lawsuits that involve paddling gone wrong, or branding that necessitated skin grafts, or a particular variety of sexual torture reserved for hazing and best not described in the gentle pages of this magazine, is astounding. To say nothing of the University of Tennessee frat boy who got dropped off, insensate, at the university hospital\u2019s emergency room and was originally assumed to be the victim of a sexual assault, and only later turned out to have damaged his rectum by allegedly pumping wine into it through an enema hose, as had his pals. Or, to turn away from the buttocks, as surely a good number of fraternity men would be well advised to do, consider another type of fraternity injury: the tendency of brothers and their guests to get liquored up and fall off\u2014or out of\u2014the damn houses is a story in itself. The campuses of Washington State University and the University of Idaho are located some eight miles apart in the vast agricultural region of the Northwest known as the Palouse. It was at the latter institution that the 19-year-old sophomore and newly minted Delta Delta Delta pledge Amanda Andaverde arrived in August of 2009, although she had scarcely moved into the Tri Delta house and registered for classes before she was at the center of events that would leave her with brain damage and cast her as the plaintiff in a major lawsuit filed on her behalf by her devastated parents. It would have been an unremarkable Wednesday evening\u2014focused on the kind of partying and hooking up that are frequent pleasures of modern sorority women\u2014save for its hideous end. Andaverde and her sorority sisters began the night at Sigma Chi, where the \u201csorority ladies\u201d drank alcohol and spent the evening with \u201cdates\u201d they had been assigned during a party game. (The language of Andaverde\u2019s legal complaint often seems couched in a combination of \u201950s lingo and polite euphemism, intended perhaps to preclude a conservative Idaho jury from making moralistic judgments about the plaintiff\u2019s behavior.) The charms of Andaverde\u2019s assigned date ran thin, apparently, because close to midnight, she left him and made her way over to the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house, where she quickly ended up on the third-floor sleeping porch. Many fraternity houses, especially older ones, have sleeping porches\u2014sometimes called \u201ccold airs\u201d or \u201crack rooms\u201d\u2014typically located on the top floor of the buildings\u2019 gable ends. They are large rooms filled with bunks, some of which are stacked in triple tiers, and their large windows are often left open, even in the coldest months. Many fraternity members have exceedingly fond memories of their time on the porches, which they view\u2014like so many fraternity traditions\u2014as a simultaneously vexing and bonding experience. Although these group sleeping arrangements were once considered an impediment to a young man\u2019s sex life, the hookup culture, in which privacy is no longer a requirement of sexual activity, has changed that, and the sleeping-porch experience is once again coming into favor. For a variety of reasons, sleeping porches feature in a number of lawsuits, pointing to an astonishing fact: despite fraternity houses\u2019 position as de facto residence halls for so many American college students, safety features are decidedly spotty; about half of them don\u2019t even have fire sprinklers. That pursuing a bachelor\u2019s degree might be something other than a deeply ascetic and generally miserable experience was once a preposterous idea. According to the complaint, shortly after arriving at SAE, Andaverde ran into a friend of hers, and he took her up to the sleeping porch, where he introduced her to a pal of his named Joseph Cody Cook. Andaverde and Cook talked, then climbed into Cook\u2019s bunk, where the two began kissing. It is at this point that the language of the suit finally frees itself of euphemism and reveals the fearsome power of the unambiguous, declarative sentence: \u201cAmanda rolled onto her shoulder toward the exterior wall, and suddenly, quickly, and unexpectedly dropped off Cook\u2019s mattress into the open exterior window, falling from the third-floor \u2018sleeping porch\u2019 to the cement approximately 25 feet below.\u201d The injuries were devastating and included permanent brain injury. Andaverde was airlifted to a trauma center in Seattle, where she remained for many weeks; in the early days of her care, it seemed she might not survive. Eventually, however, she improved enough to leave the hospital and was transferred to a series of rehabilitation centers, where she spent many months learning to regain basic functions. Police, interviewed about the case, defended themselves the way police departments in college towns all over the country reasonably defend themselves when accused of not preventing a fraternity-house disaster: \u201cWe just can\u2019t send undercover people into private houses or private parties,\u201d said David Duke, the Moscow, Idaho, assistant chief of police. Local news outlets covered Andaverde\u2019s plight widely and sympathetically, although the optimism with which her \u201cmiraculous\u201d recovery was celebrated was perhaps exaggerated. A television news report dedicated to that miracle revealed a young woman who, while she had escaped death, had clearly been grievously injured. As the reporter interviewed her mother, Andaverde sat in a wheelchair. When her hands were not propped on a black lap tray latched to the chair, she struggled to grasp a crayon and run it across the pages of a children\u2019s coloring book, or to place the six large pieces of a simple puzzle\u2014square, triangle, circle\u2014into their spaces. She eventually improved from this desperate state\u2014learning to walk and dress herself\u2014but she was a far cry from the student of veterinary medicine she had once been. The local inclinations to see a badly injured college student as a figure deserving of community support, and to view even a limited recovery as evidence of the goodness of God, are not unaligned with regional preferences for self-reliance and for taking responsibility for one\u2019s own actions, however dire the consequences. The inevitable court case\u2014in which the Andaverde family named not only SAE and Tri Delta as defendants, but also the University of Idaho and the Idaho State Board of Education\u2014was dismissed on summary judgment because there was no dispute that Andaverde fell out of an open window, and because there was no evidence of an inherently dangerous condition in the house: that the window was open was obvious to anyone who walked into the room. The court determined that no other person or institution had a duty to protect Amanda from the actions and decisions\u2014the decision to drink alcohol, as a minor; the decision to climb into a bunk bed; the impulse to roll over\u2014that led to her accident. Phil Toledano Andaverde\u2019s case seemed to me to be an isolated tragedy, until I sent away to the Latah County courthouse for a copy of the complaint and discovered within it this sentence: \u201cAmanda\u2019s fall was the second fall of a student from an upper-story fraternity house window at the University of Idaho within approximately a two-week period.\u201d This struck me as an astonishing coincidence. I looked into the matter and found that, indeed, a 20-year-old man named Shane Meyer had fallen from the third-floor window of the Delta Tau Delta house just 12 days before Andaverde\u2019s fall from SAE; not surprisingly, the police reported that \u201calcohol may have been a factor.\u201d He, too, had been airlifted to Seattle, and incredibly, the two fought for their lives in the same critical-care unit at Harborview Medical Center. I became intrigued by this kind of injury and began to do some more checking into the subject. I discovered that two months after Andaverde\u2019s fall, a 20-year-old student at Washington State\u2014\u201cquite intoxicated,\u201d in the laconic assessment of a local cop\u2014pitched forward and fell from a third-floor window of Alpha Kappa Lambda, escaping serious injury when his fall was broken by an SUV parked below. That these three events were not greeted on either campus by any kind of clamoring sense of urgency\u2014that they were, rather, met with a resigned sort of \u201chere we go again\u201d attitude by campus administrators and with what appeared to be the pro forma appointment of an investigative task force\u2014sparked my interest, and so it was that I entered the bizarre world of falls from fraternity houses, which, far from being freakish and unpredictable events, are in fact fairly regular occurrences across the country. During the 2012\u201313 school year on the Palouse\u2014where students from the two campuses often share apartments and attend parties at each other\u2019s schools\u2014the falls continued. In September, a student suffered serious injuries after falling off the roof of the Alpha Tau Omega house at the University of Idaho, and two days later a Washington State student fell three stories from a window at Phi Kappa Tau. In November, a 19-year-old suffered critical head injuries when he fell backwards off a second-floor balcony at the Washington State Lambda Chi Alpha house, necessitating the surgical removal of part of his skull. In April, a University of Idaho student named Krysta Huft filed a suit against the Delta Chi fraternity, seeking damages for a broken pelvis resulting from a 2011 fall, which she claims was from the house\u2019s third-story sleeping porch onto a basketball court beneath it. I decided to widen my search, and quickly discovered that this is not a phenomenon particular to the Northwest. Across the country, kids fall\u2014disastrously\u2014from the upper heights of fraternity houses with some regularity. They tumble from the open windows they are trying to urinate out of, slip off roofs, lose their grasp on drainpipes, misjudge the width of fire-escape landings. On February 25, 2012, a student at the University of California at Berkeley attempted to climb down the drainpipe of the Phi Gamma Delta house, fell, and suffered devastating injuries; on April 14 of the same year, a 21-year-old student at Gannon University, in Pennsylvania, died after a fall from the second-floor balcony of the Alpha Phi Delta house the night before; on May 13, a Cornell student was airlifted to a trauma center after falling from the fire escape at Delta Chi; on October 13, a student at James Madison University fell from the roof of the three-story Delta Chi house and was airlifted to the University of Virginia hospital; on December 1, a 19-year-old woman fell eight feet from the Sigma Alpha Mu house at Penn State. This summer brought little relief. On July 13, a man fell more than 30 feet from a third-story window at the Theta Delta Chi house at the University of Washington and was transported to Harborview Medical Center (which must by now be developing a subspecialty in such injuries); that same day, a Dartmouth College employee, apparently having consumed LSD and marijuana, fell out of a second-story window of the Sigma Nu house and was seriously injured. On August 13, a student at the University of Oklahoma fell face-first off a balcony of the SAE house; the next day, a woman fell from a second-story fire escape at Phi Kappa Tau at Washington State University. The current school year began, and still the falls continued. In September, a student at Washington State fell down a flight of stairs in the Delta Chi house and was rendered unconscious; a University of Minnesota student was hospitalized after falling off a second-floor balcony of the Phi Kappa Psi house; a Northwestern student was listed in critical condition after falling out of a third-floor window of the Phi Gamma Delta house; and an MIT student injured his head and genitals after falling through a skylight at the Phi Sigma Kappa house and landing some 40 feet below. These falls, of course, are in addition to the many other kinds of havoc and tragedy associated with fraternities. On the Palouse, such incidents include the January 2013 death of 18-year-old Joseph Wiederrick, a University of Idaho freshman who had made the dean\u2019s list his first semester, and who had plans to become an architect. He had attended a party at SAE (of which he was not a member) and then wandered, apparently drunk and lost, for five miles before freezing to death under a bridge. They also include the March 2013 conviction of Jesse M. Vierstra, who, while visiting Sigma Chi over the University of Idaho\u2019s homecoming weekend, raped an 18-year-old freshman in the bushes outside the house. (He is appealing the decision.) The notion that fraternities are target defendants did not hold true in my investigation. College students can (and do) fall out of just about any kind of residence, of course. But during the period of time under consideration, serious falls from fraternity houses on the two Palouse campuses far outnumbered those from other types of student residences, including privately owned apartments occupied by students. I began to view Amanda Andaverde\u2019s situation in a new light. Why are so many colleges allowing students to live and party in such unsafe locations? And why do the lawsuits against fraternities for this kind of serious injury and death\u2014so predictable and so preventable\u2014have such a hard time getting traction? The answers lie in the recent history of fraternities and the colleges and universities that host them. from the archives The Hazards of Duke \"With a social scene dominated by fraternities and sororities (a way of life consisting of ardent partying and hooking up, offset by spurts of busywork composing angry letters to campus newspapers and taking online alcohol-education classes), ... [Duke] is a university whose thoughtful students are overshadowed by its voraciously self-centered ones.\" Read the full story by Caitlin Flanagan in the Jan/Feb 2011 issue. What all of these lawsuits ultimately concern is a crucially important question in higher education, one that legal scholars have been grappling with for the past half century. This question is perhaps most elegantly expressed in the subtitle of Robert D. Bickel and Peter F. Lake\u2019s authoritative 1999 book on the subject, The Rights and Responsibilities of the Modern University: Who Assumes the Risks of College Life? The answer to this question has been steadily evolving ever since the 1960s, when dramatic changes took place on American campuses, changes that affected both a university\u2019s ability to control student behavior and the status of fraternities in the undergraduate firmament. During this period of student unrest, the fraternities\u2014long the unquestioned leaders in the area of sabotaging or ignoring the patriarchal control of school administrators\u2014became the exact opposite: representatives of the very status quo the new activists sought to overthrow. Suddenly their beer bashes and sorority mixers, their panty raids and obsession with the big game, seemed impossibly reactionary when compared with the mind-altering drugs being sampled in off-campus apartments where sexual liberation was being born and the Little Red Book proved, if nothing else, a fantastic coaster for a leaky bong. American students sought to wrest themselves entirely from the disciplinary control of their colleges and universities, institutions that had historically operated in loco parentis, carefully monitoring the private behavior of undergraduates. The students of the new era wanted nothing to do with that infantilizing way of existence, and fought to rid themselves of the various curfews, dorm mothers, demerit systems, and other modes of institutional oppression. If they were old enough to die in Vietnam, powerful enough to overthrow a president, groovy enough to expand their minds with LSD and free love, then they certainly didn\u2019t need their own colleges\u2014the very places where they were forming their radical, nation-changing ideas\u2014to treat them like teenyboppers in need of a sock hop and a chaperone. It was a turning point: American colleges began to regard their students not as dependents whose private lives they must shape and monitor, but as adult consumers whose contract was solely for an education, not an upbringing. The doctrine of in loco parentis was abolished at school after school. Through it all, fraternities\u2014for so long the repositories of the most outrageous behavior\u2014moldered, all but forgotten. Membership fell sharply, fraternity houses slid into increasing states of disrepair, and hundreds of chapters closed. Animal House, released in 1978, at once predicted and to no small extent occasioned the roaring return of fraternity life that began in the early \u201980s and that gave birth to today\u2019s vital Greek scene. The casting of John Belushi was essential to the movie\u2019s influence: no one had greater credibility in the post-\u201960s youth culture. If something as fundamentally reactionary as fraternity membership was going to replace something as fundamentally radical as student unrest, it would need to align itself with someone whose bona fides among young, white, middle-class males were unassailable. In this newly forming culture, the drugs and personal liberation of the \u201960s would be paired with the self-serving materialism of the \u201980s, all of which made partying for its own sake\u2014and not as a philosophical adjunct to solving some complicated problem in Southeast Asia\u2014a righteous activity for the pampered young collegian. Fraternity life was reborn with a vengeance. It was an entirely new kind of student who arrived at the doors of those great and crumbling mansions: at once deeply attracted to the ceremony and formality of fraternity life and yet utterly transformed by the social revolutions of the past decades. These new members and their countless guests brought with them hard drugs, new and ever-developing sexual attitudes, and a stunningly high tolerance for squalor (never had middle- and upper-middle-class American young people lived in such filth as did \u201960s and \u201970s college kids who were intent on rejecting their parents\u2019 bourgeois ways). Furthermore, in 1984 Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, with the ultimate result of raising the legal drinking age to 21 in all 50 states. This change moved college partying away from bars and college-sponsored events and toward private houses\u2014an ideal situation for fraternities. When these advances were combined with the evergreen fraternity traditions of violent hazing and brawling among rival frats, the scene quickly became wildly dangerous. Adult supervision was nowhere to be found. Colleges had little authority to intervene in what took place in the personal lives of its students visiting private property. Fraternities, eager to provide their members with the independence that is at the heart of the system\u2014and responsive to members\u2019 wish for the same level of freedom that non-Greek students enjoyed\u2014had largely gotten rid of the live-in resident advisers who had once provided some sort of check on the brothers. With these conditions in place, lawsuits began to pour in. No sooner has a national fraternity rolled out a new \u201cMen of Principle\u201d or \u201cTrue Gentlemen\u201d campaign than reports of a lurid disaster in some prominent or far-flung chapter undermine the whole thing. The mid-1980s were a treacherous time to be the defendant in a tort lawsuit. Personal-injury cases had undergone a long shift to the plaintiff\u2019s advantage; the theory of comparative negligence\u2014by which an individual can acknowledge his or her own partial responsibility for an injury yet still recover damages from a defendant\u2014had become the standard; the era of huge jury verdicts was at hand. Americans in vast numbers\u2014motivated perhaps in part by the possibility of financial recompense, and in part by a new national impetus to move personal suffering from the sphere of private sorrow to that of public confession and complaint\u2014began to sue those who had damaged them. Many fraternity lawsuits listed the relevant college or university among the defendants, a practice still common among less experienced plaintiff\u2019s attorneys. These institutions possess deep reservoirs of liability coverage, but students rarely recover significant funds from their schools. As Amanda Andaverde\u2019s attorneys discovered the hard way, a great deal of time and money can be spent seeking damages from institutions of higher learning, which can be protected by everything from sovereign immunity and damage caps (in the case of public universities), to their limited ability to monitor the private behavior of their students. But for the fraternities themselves, it was a far different story. So recently and robustly brought back to life, the fraternities now faced the most serious threat to their existence they had ever experienced. A single lawsuit had the potential to devastate a fraternity. In 1985, a young man grievously injured in a Kappa Alpha\u2013related accident reached a settlement with the fraternity that, over the course of his lifetime, could amount to some $21 million\u2014a sum that caught the attention of everyone in the Greek world. Liability insurance became both ruinously expensive and increasingly difficult to obtain. The insurance industry ranked American fraternities as the sixth-worst insurance risk in the country\u2014just ahead of toxic-waste-removal companies. \u201cYou guys are nuts,\u201d an insurance representative told a fraternity CEO in 1989, just before canceling the organization\u2019s coverage; \u201cyou can\u2019t operate like this much longer.\u201d For fraternities to survive, they needed to do four separate but related things: take the task of acquiring insurance out of the hands of the local chapters and place it in the hands of the vast national organizations; develop procedures and policies that would transfer as much of their liability as possible to outside parties; find new and creative means of protecting their massive assets from juries; and\u2014perhaps most important of all\u2014find a way of indemnifying the national and local organizations from the dangerous and illegal behavior of some of their undergraduate members. The way fraternities accomplished all of this is the underlying story in the lawsuits they face, and it is something that few members\u2014and, I would wager, even fewer parents of members\u2014grasp completely, comprising a set of realities you should absolutely understand in detail if your son ever decides to join a fraternity. Self-insurance was an obvious means for combating prohibitive insurance pricing and the widening reluctance to insure fraternities. In 1992, four fraternities created what was first called the Fraternity Risk Management Trust, a vast sum of money used for reinsurance. Today, 32 fraternities belong to this trust. In 2006, a group of seven other fraternities bought their own insurance broker, James R. Favor, which now insures many others. More important than self-insurance, however, was the development of a risk-management policy that would become\u2014across these huge national outfits and their hundreds of individual chapters\u2014the industry standard. This was accomplished by the creation of something called the Fraternal Information and Programming Group (FIPG), which in the mid-1980s developed a comprehensive risk-management policy for fraternities that is regularly updated. Currently 32 fraternities are members of the FIPG and adhere to this policy, or to their own even more rigorous versions. One fraternity expert told me that even non-FIPG frats have similar policies, many based in large measure on FIPG\u2019s, which is seen as something of a blueprint. In a certain sense, you may think you belong to Tau Kappa Epsilon or Sigma Nu or Delta Tau Delta\u2014but if you find yourself a part of life-changing litigation involving one of those outfits, what you really belong to is FIPG, because its risk-management policy (and your adherence to or violation of it) will determine your fate far more than the vows you made during your initiation ritual\u2014vows composed by long-dead men who had never even heard of the concept of fraternity insurance. FIPG regularly produces a risk-management manual\u2014the current version is 50 pages\u2014that lays out a wide range of (optional) best practices. If the manual were Anna Karenina, alcohol policy would be its farming reform: the buzz-killing subplot that quickly reveals itself to be an authorial obsession. For good reason: the majority of all fraternity insurance claims involve booze\u2014I have read hundreds of fraternity incident reports, not one of which describes an event where massive amounts of alcohol weren\u2019t part of the problem\u2014and the need to manage or transfer risk presented by alcohol is perhaps the most important factor in protecting the system\u2019s longevity. Any plaintiff\u2019s attorney worth his salt knows how to use relevant social-host and dramshop laws against a fraternity; to avoid this kind of liability, the fraternity needs to establish that the young men being charged were not acting within the scope of their status as fraternity members. Once they violated their frat\u2019s alcohol policy, they parted company with the frat. It\u2019s a neat piece of logic: the very fact that a young man finds himself in need of insurance coverage is often grounds for denying it to him. So: alcohol and the fraternity man. Despite everything you may think you know about life on frat row, there are actually only two FIPG-approved means of serving drinks at a frat party. The first is to hire a third-party vendor who will sell drinks and to whom some liability\u2014most significant, that of checking whether drinkers are of legal age\u2014will be transferred. The second and far more common is to have a BYO event, in which the liability for each bottle of alcohol resides solely in the person who brought it. If you think this is in any way a casual system, then you have never read either the FIPG risk-management manual or its sister publication, an essay written in the surrealist vein titled \u201cMaking Bring Your Own Beverage Events Happen.\u201d The official byo system is like something dreamed up by a committee of Soviet bureaucrats and Irish nuns. It begins with the composition\u2014no fewer than 24 hours before the party\u2014of a comprehensive guest list. This guest list does not serve the happy function of ensuring a perfect mix of types and temperaments at the festivity; rather, it limits attendance\u2014and ensures that the frat is in possession of \u201ca witness list in the event something does occur which may end up in court two or more years later.\u201d Provided a fraternity member\u2014let\u2019s call him Larry\u2014is older than 21 (which the great majority of members, like the great majority of all college students, are not), he is allowed to bring six (and no more) beers or four (and no more) wine coolers to the party. (FIPG\u2019s admiration for the wine-cooler four-pack suggests that at least some aspects of the foundational document\u2014including its recommendation for throwing a M*A*S*H-themed party as recently as 2007\u2014have not received much of an overhaul since its first edition, published in the mid\u2011\u201980s.) Okay, so Larry brings a six-pack. The first stop, depending on which fraternity he belongs to: a \u201csober check point,\u201d at which he is subjected to an examination. Does he appear to have already consumed any alcohol? Is he in any way \u201cknown\u201d to have done so? If he passes, he hands over his ID for inspection. Next he must do business with a \u201csober monitor.\u201d This person relieves him of the six-pack, hands him a ticket indicating the precise type of beer he brought, and ideally affixes a \u201cnon breakable except by cutting\u201d wristband to his person; only then can Larry retrieve his beers, one at a time, for his own personal consumption. If any are left over at the end of the party, his fraternity will secure them until the next day, when Larry can be reunited with his unconsumed beers, unless his frat decided to \u201celiminate\u201d them overnight. Weaknesses in the system include the fact that all of these people coming between Larry and his beer\u2014the sober monitors and ID checkers and militarized barkeeps\u2014are Larry\u2019s fraternity brothers, who are among his closest buddies and who have pledged him lifelong fealty during candlelit ceremonies rife with Masonic mumbo jumbo and the fluttering language of 19th-century romantic friendship. Note also that these policies make it possible for fraternities to be the one industry in the country in which every aspect of serving alcohol can be monitored and managed by people who are legally too young to drink it. During a crisis, the questionnaires and honest accounts that fraternity members submit gratefully to their national organization may return to haunt many of the brothers. Clearly, a great number of fraternity members will, at some point in their undergraduate career, violate their frat\u2019s alcohol policy regarding the six beers\u2014and just as clearly, the great majority will never face any legal consequences for doing so. But when the inevitable catastrophes do happen, that policy can come to seem more like a cynical hoax than a real-world solution to a serious problem. When something terrible takes place\u2014a young man plummets from a roof, a young woman is assaulted, a fraternity brother is subjected to the kind of sexual sadism that appears all too often in fraternity lawsuits\u2014any small violation of policy can leave fraternity members twisting in the wind. Consider the following scenario: Larry makes a small, human-size mistake one night. Instead of waiting for the slow drip of six warm beers, he brings a bottle of Maker\u2019s Mark to the party, and\u2014in the spirit of not being a weirdo or a dick\u2014he shares it, at one point pouring a couple of ounces into the passing Solo cup of a kid who\u2019s running on empty and asks him for a shot. Larry never sees the kid again that night\u2014not many people do; he ends up drinking himself to death in an upstairs bedroom. In the sad fullness of time, the night\u2019s horror is turned into a lawsuit, in which Larry becomes a named defendant. Thanks in part to the guest/witness list, Larry can be cut loose, both from the expensive insurance he was required to help pay for (by dint of his dues) as a precondition of membership, and from any legal defense paid for by the organization. What will happen to Larry now? Gentle reader, if you happen to have a son currently in a college fraternity, I would ask that you take several carbon dioxide\u2013rich deep breaths from a paper bag before reading the next paragraph. I\u2019ll assume you are sitting down. Ready? \u201cI\u2019ve recovered millions and millions of dollars from homeowners\u2019 policies,\u201d a top fraternal plaintiff\u2019s attorney told me. For that is how many of the claims against boys who violate the strict policies are paid: from their parents\u2019 homeowners\u2019 insurance. As for the exorbitant cost of providing the young man with a legal defense for the civil case (in which, of course, there are no public defenders), that is money he and his parents are going to have to scramble to come up with, perhaps transforming the family home into an ATM to do it. The financial consequences of fraternity membership can be devastating, and they devolve not on the 18-year-old \u201cman\u201d but on his planning-for-retirement parents. Like the six-beer policy, the Fraternal Information and Programming Group\u2019s chillingly comprehensive crisis-management plan was included in its manual for many years. But in 2013, the plan suddenly disappeared from its pages. When asked why this was so, Dave Westol, a longtime FIPG board member, said, \u201cMember organizations prefer to establish their own procedures, and therefore the section has been eliminated.\u201d However, many fraternities continue to rely on the group\u2019s advice for in-house risk management, and it is well worth examining if you want to know what takes place in the hours following many fraternity disasters. As it is described in the two most recent editions that I was able to obtain (2003 and 2007), the plan serves a dual purpose, at once benevolent and mercenary. The benevolent part is accomplished by the clear directive that injured parties are to receive immediate medical attention, and that all fraternity brothers who come into contact with the relevant emergency workers are to be completely forthright about what has taken place. And the rest? The plans I obtained recommend six important steps: 1. In the midst of the horror, the chapter president takes immediate, commanding, and inspiring control of the situation: \u201cIn times of stress, leaders step forward.\u201d 2. A call is made to the fraternity\u2019s crisis hotline or the national headquarters, no matter the hour: \u201cSomeone will be available. They would much rather hear about a situation from you at 3:27 a.m. than receive an 8:01 a.m. telephone call from a reporter asking for a comment about \u2018The situation involving your chapter at ____.\u2019 \u201d 3. The president closes the fraternity house to outsiders and summons all members back to the house: \u201cUnorthodox situations call for unorthodox responses from leaders. Most situations occur at night. Therefore, be prepared to call a meeting of all members and all pledged members as soon as possible, even if that is at 3 a.m.\u201d 4. One member\u2014who has already received extensive media training\u2014is put in charge of all relations with the press, an entity fraternities view as biased and often unscrupulous. The appointed member should be prepared to present a concise, factual, and minimally alarming account of what took place. For example: \u201cA new member was injured at a social event.\u201d 5. In the case of the death of a guest or a member, fraternity brothers do not attempt direct contact with the deceased\u2019s parents. This hideous task is to be left to the impersonal forces of the relevant professionals. (I know of one family who did not know their son was in any kind of trouble until\u2014many hours after his death, and probably long after his fraternity brothers had initiated the crisis-management protocol\u2014their home phone rang and the caller ID came up with the area code of their boy\u2019s college and a single word: coroner). If the dead person was a fraternity member who lived in the house, his brothers should return any borrowed items to his room and temporarily relocate his roommate, if he had one. Members may offer to pack up his belongings, but \u201cit is more likely the family will want to do this themselves.\u201d Several empty boxes might thoughtfully be left outside the room for this purpose. 6. Members sit tight until consultants from the national organization show up to take control of the situation and to walk them through the next steps, which often include the completion of questionnaires explaining exactly what happened and one-on-one interviews with the fraternity representatives. The anxious brothers are reminded to be completely honest and forthcoming in these accounts, and to tell the folks from national absolutely everything they know so that the situation can be resolved in the best possible manner. As you should by now be able to see very clearly, the interests of the national organization and the individual members cleave sharply as this crisis-management plan is followed. Those questionnaires and honest accounts\u2014submitted gratefully to the grown-ups who have arrived, the brothers believe, to help them\u2014may return to haunt many of the brothers, providing possible cause for separating them from the fraternity, dropping them from the fraternity\u2019s insurance, laying the blame on them as individuals and not on the fraternity as the sponsoring organization. Indeed, the young men who typically rush so gratefully into the open arms of the representatives from their beloved national\u2014an outfit to which they have pledged eternal allegiance\u2014would be far better served by not talking to them at all, by walking away from the chapter house as quickly as possible and calling a lawyer. The financial consequences of fraternity membership can be devastating, and they devolve not on the 18-year-old \u201cman\u201d but on his planning-for-retirement parents. So here is the essential question: In the matter of these disasters, are fraternities acting in an ethical manner, requiring good behavior from their members and punishing them soundly for bad or even horrific decisions? Or are they keeping a cool distance from the mayhem, knowing full well that misbehavior occurs with regularity (\u201cmost events take place at night\u201d) and doing nothing about it until the inevitable tragedy occurs, at which point they cajole members into incriminating themselves via a crisis-management plan presented as being in their favor? The opposing positions on this matter are held most forcefully and expressed most articulately by two men: Douglas Fierberg, the best plaintiff\u2019s attorney in the country when it comes to fraternity-related litigation, and Peter Smithhisler, the CEO of the North-American Interfraternity Conference, a trade organization representing 75 fraternities, among them all 32 members of the Fraternal Information and Programming Group. In a parallel universe, the two men would be not adversaries but powerful allies, for they have much in common: both are robust midwesterners in the flush of vital middle age and at the zenith of their professional powers; both possess more dark knowledge of college-student life and collegiate binge drinking than many, if not most, of the experts hired to study and quantify the phenomenon; both have built careers devoted to the lives and betterment of young people. But two roads diverged in the yellow wood, and here we are. One man is an avenger, a gun for hire, a person constitutionally ill-prepared to lose a fight; the other is a conciliator, a patient explainer, a man ever willing to lift the flap of his giant tent and welcome you inside. I have had long and wide-ranging conversations with both men, in which each put forth his perspective on the situation. Fierberg is a man of obvious and deep intelligence, comfortable\u2014in the way of alpha-male litigators\u2014with sharply correcting a fuzzy thought; with using obscenities; with speaking derisively, even contemptuously, of opponents. He is also the man I would run to as though my hair were on fire if I ever found myself in a legal battle with a fraternity, and so should you. In a year of reporting this story, I have not spoken with anyone outside of the fraternity system who possesses a deeper understanding of its inner workings; its closely guarded procedures and money trails; and the legal theories it has developed over the past three decades to protect itself, often very successfully, from lawsuits. Fierberg speaks frequently and openly with the press, and because of this\u2014and because of the reticence of senior members of the fraternity system to speak at length with meddlesome journalists\u2014the media often reflect his attitude. For all these reasons, Fierberg is generally loathed by people at the top of the fraternity world, who see him as a money-hungry lawyer who has chosen to chase their particular ambulance, and whose professed zeal for reforming the industry is a sham: what he wants is his share of huge damages, not systemic changes that would cut off the money flow. But in my experience of him, this is simply not the case. Sure, he has built a lucrative practice. But he is clearly passionate about his cause and the plight of the kids\u2014some of them horribly injured, others dead\u2014who comprise his caseload, along with their shattered parents. \u201cUntil proven otherwise,\u201d Fierberg told me in April of fraternities, \u201cthey all are very risky organizations for young people to be involved in.\u201d He maintains that fraternities \u201care part of an industry that has tremendous risk and a tremendous history of rape, serious injury, and death, and the vast majority share common risk-management policies that are fundamentally flawed. Most of them are awash in alcohol. And most if not all of them are bereft of any meaningful adult supervision.\u201d As for the risk-management policies themselves: \u201cThey are primarily designed to take the nationals\u2019 fingerprints off the injury and deaths, and I don\u2019t believe that they offer any meaningful provisions.\u201d The fraternity system, he argues, is \u201cthe largest industry in this country directly involved in the provision of alcohol to underage people.\u201d The crisis-management plans reveal that in \u201cthe foreseeable future\u201d there may be \u201cthe death or serious injury\u201d of a healthy young person at a fraternity function. Are fraternities acting in an ethical manner, requiring good behavior and punishing poor decisions? Or are they keeping a cool distance from the mayhem, knowing full well that it occurs with regularity? And then there is Peter Smithhisler, who is the senior fraternity man ne plus ultra: unfailingly, sometimes elaborately courteous; careful in his choice of words; unflappable; and as unlikely to interrupt or drop the f-bomb on a respectful female journalist as he would be to join the Communist Party. He is the kind of man you would want on your side in a tough spot, the kind of man you would want mentoring your son through the challenging passage from late adolescence to young manhood. He believes that the fraternity experience at its best constitutes an appeal to a young man\u2019s better angels: through service, leadership training, and accountability for mistakes, a brother can learn the valuable lessons he will need to become \u201ca better dad, a better teacher, a better engineer, a better pilot, a better \u2018insert career here.\u2019\u201d Spend some time talking with Pete Smithhisler, and you can go from refusing to allow your son to join a fraternity to demanding he do so. Indeed, the day after I talked with him, I happened to be at a social gathering where I met two women whose sons had just graduated from college. \u201cThe fraternity was what saved him,\u201d one mother said with great feeling. Her son had waited until sophomore year to rush, and freshman year he had been so lonely and unsure of himself that she had become deeply worried about him. But everything changed after he pledged. He had friends; he was happy. When he\u2019d had to have some surgery while at school, his brothers had visited him almost around the clock, bringing him food, keeping up his spirits, checking in with his doctors and charming his nurses. \u201cIf only I could have gotten my son to join one,\u201d the other mom said, wistfully. \u201cI kept trying, but he wouldn\u2019t do it.\u201d Why had she wished he\u2019d pledged a fraternity? \u201cHe would have been so much more connected to the college,\u201d she said. \u201cHe would have had so many other opportunities.\u201d", "source": "news_summ", "evaluation": "rouge"}
{"instructions": ["Please summarize these news articles."], "outputs": ["\u2013 Frightened North Carolinians fleeing Irene are jamming highways as the East Coast steels for what could be the biggest hurricane in decades. At least seven states have now declared a state of emergency, and hundreds of flights are being canceled. Gas stations are running out of fuel and ATMs have been emptied of cash as Americans hit the road for a bumper-to-bumper trip out of Irene's angry path. The Category 3 storm is expected to hit the Southeast sometime tomorrow, and hundreds of thousands of residents have been ordered out of their homes in three North Carolina counties. Norfolk, Va., is also ordering residents to evacuate, and Washington, DC, has been forced to postpone Sunday's planned MLK Memorial dedication. \"This is a very, very serious situation,\" a spokeswoman for Dare County told ABC News. \"We have not seen anything like this in the lifetimes of most our residents. Once the storm hits, it will be very difficult to respond to distress calls.\" Irene is some 700 miles wide now and moving at a slow 12mph, which means it can wreak extensive damage in a region over a long period of time; it could cause up to $13.9 billion in damage on the East Coast. The storm is expected to barrel into New York City on Sunday, packing winds of up to 90mph. New Jersey communities are already being evacuated, and hundreds of street fairs have been canceled and elder care facilities and hospitals in low-lying area will be evacuated in New York today. NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg says residents in low-lying parts of the city should get out today as the transit system is planned to be shut down tomorrow."], "input": "As Hurricane Irene swung north Thursday, putting the Washington region in its sights, Maryland and Virginia declared a state of emergency and Sunday\u2019s dedication of the memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was postponed. Organizers said the event will be rescheduled for September or October. The memorial, the first on the Mall honoring an African American, has been a quarter-century in the making, but safety trumped ceremony. Hurricane Irene was forecast to sweep over the Outer Banks of North Carolina overnight Friday and advance into the Washington area with a vanguard of showers beginning Saturday afternoon. Early Friday morning, the National Weather Service upgraded the Tropical Storm Watch issued for much of the D.C. area to a Tropical Storm Warning. Meanwhile, Irene weakened slightly to a Category 2 storm as it approached the East Coast, where a hurricane warning was also extended to New Jersey. If the hurricane stays on track, the worst of Irene will arrive in Virginia, Maryland and the District later Saturday and into Sunday morning. Late-summer vacationers evacuated Atlantic coast beaches, which are expected to be hit hardest before the storm wallops New England. The intensity of the storm and the shift in the forecast track farther to the west prompted the decision to delay the memorial dedication, said Harry E. Johnson Sr., chief executive of the memorial project foundation. \u201cI\u2019m disappointed and hurt, really,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cBut the memorial is going to be there forever.\u201d Johnson said the change might allow those who planned to travel to stay home and for those in Washington to leave ahead of the storm. Governors along the coast, including those in Virginia and Maryland, declared states of emergency Thursday, and thousands of weekend events were canceled. \u201cThis is a large, this is a deadly, this is a slow-moving hurricane that is bearing down on the state of Maryland,\u201d Maryland Gov. Martin O\u2019Malley (D) said in declaring an emergency. \u201cThere will no doubt be a lot of flooding. Citizens should anticipate long periods of electrical outages.\u201d A significant storm surge is expected to flood coastal areas, and wind-driven flooding may occur along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. The worst of the weather is likely to be east of the Interstate 95 corridor, which may get four to six inches of rain, prolonged winds of 50 to 70 mph, and gusts of 90 to 100 mph, according to meteorologists with The Washington Post\u2019s Capital Weather Gang. Amtrak canceled train departures from Southeastern states and curtailed some service in the Northeast. Airports said they expected flight delays and cancellations through the weekend, with many airlines allowing fliers to change their plans without penalty. An endless stream of vacationers rolled across the bridge out of Ocean City, on Thursday evening, and homeowners rushed in the opposite direction to board up their rental properties. Ocean City was one of many resort areas where evacuation was mandatory. Colleges on the verge of opening for the fall semester warned students to delay their arrival, and the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg told its students to go home. Three other schools \u2014 the University of Maryland, George Washington University and Catholic University \u2014 said they would open their dormitories a day early, on Friday, so that students could get settled before the storm hit. George Mason University said it would implement a flexible move-in schedule. In New York, the Associated Press reported that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) said officials expect to shut down the city\u2019s transit system Saturday afternoon ahead of the hurricane, which is forecast to strike eastern Queens. After passing over the Bahamas on Thursday, the storm first fell on the U.S. coast in Florida, where its outermost bands swept in with bursts of wind and rain and a driving riptide. The exodus from the Outer Banks began early Thursday after an evacuation order Wednesday night. Traffic on Route 168 crawled as lines of sport-utility vehicles with surfboards and fishing rods mounted on their roofs headed north from the barrier islands. \u201cMy aunt and uncle are used to storms, but they got a bit worried about this one,\u201d said Melissa Wallace of St. Louis, who had been vacationing at their Cape Hatteras beach house. \u201cWe just thought better safe than sorry.\u201d In the Washington region, there were warnings that people should be prepared for power outages as toppling trees take down electrical lines. Road crews were on alert to clear fallen trees and other wind-driven debris from highways. More than 2,000 sandbags were being placed at Metro stations where water tends to come up over the curbs and flow down escalators. Metro crews also checked drains in tunnels, and some vehicles assigned to Metro supervisors were being equipped with chain saws to keep the transit system moving. The District and Alexandria offered free sandbags to residents. O\u2019Malley said the mandatory evacuation of Ocean City underscored the seriousness of the storm. \u201cThis is not a time to get out the camera and sit on the beach and take pictures of the waves,\u201d he said. Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) authorized local officials to issue mandatory evacuation orders. \u201cI reserve the right to direct and compel evacuation from the same and different areas and determine a different timetable both where local governing bodies have made such a determination and where local governing bodies have not made such a determination,\u201d McDonnell said in a statement. Pepco urged customers who need power for critical medical equipment to review emergency plans and be prepared for extended power outages. Dominion Virginia Power and BGE said repair crews were preparing for emergency restoration work over the next several days. Extra crews from other states were headed to the region to assist with recovery. \u201cThis storm has serious potential to cause widespread damage,\u201d said Rodney Blevins, Dominion\u2019s vice president. \u201cWe are geared up to handle any situation as quickly and safely as possible. We are treating Hurricane Irene seriously, and we urge our customers to monitor local weather forecasts for changing conditions in order to remain safe.\u201d Staff writers Shyamantha Asokan, Dana Hedgpeth, Jenna Johnson, Anita Kumar, Michael E. Ruane and John Wagner contributed to this report. NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City residents who live in low-lying areas should start moving out on Friday, before Hurricane Irene is expected to hit, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Thursday. Otherwise, they risk getting stuck because the mass transit system that millions of New Yorkers rely on might have to be shut down on Saturday, he told reporters. (Reporting by Joan Gralla; Editing by Jan Paschal) The exodus from the North Carolina coast has begun and tonight it is a slow motion, bumper to bumper march inland as tens of thousands heed warnings to get out of the way of Hurricane Irene. Gas stations are running out, ATM's are out of cash and one woman was out of a very special night. Melissa Cook was supposed to get married this weekend. \"The TV showed the mandatory evacuation and I burst into tears,\" Cook said. \"Everything I had planned and dreamed about.\" Hurricane Irene's wave of disappointment also affected beach goers in South Carolina. Police closed the beaches to swimming after six swimmers were rescued from rip currents caused by the massive storm. As Irene -- a Category 3 hurricane with 115 mph winds -- blasted through the Bahamas, the U.S. began bracing for the storm's worst. To See Irene's Expected Path Over East Coast, Click Here Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, under President Obama's direction, contacted East Coast mayors and governors potentially in Irene's path. Later, she and FEMA director Craig Fugate later held a conference call with state, local, and tribal officials on planning for the storm. \"Given the unpredictability of these storms, we are currently planning for several scenarios, including potential impacts to major metro areas and critical infrastructure,\" Napolitano said in a Department of Homeland Security news release. Evacuation orders were issued along the coast of North Carolina today in Dare, Currituck and Cateret counties. There are 180,000 people just in Dare County and another 150,000 people were told to get out of Ocean City, Md. \"This is a very, very serious situation,\" said Dorothy Toolan, public information officer for Dare County, N.C. \"We have not seen anything like this in the lifetimes of most our residents...Once the storm hits it will be very difficult to respond to distress calls.\" Not everyone was heading out of town. The parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Moorehead City in Cateret County was filled with people stocking up on supplies to ride out the storm. \"I've lived through hurricanes all my life, and I've only run from one,\" said a man who identified himself simply as George. \"Unless it's a (category) 4 or 5 coming straight at me, I'm not leaving.\" \"I'm going to sit at home, watch television and play on my computer. I'm not worried about this thing,\" George said. In Florida, at least 8 people were hurt after a wave knocked them over on the jerry they were on off Boynton Beach Inlet, The Associated Press reported. Others were taking no chances. A state of emergency was declared in Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg said police are deploying more than 80 boats around the city as well as several helicopters to prepare for emergencies. City hospitals have tested their emergency generators, and the city's airports are stockpiling diapers, cots, blankets, pillow and bottles of water. Fearing Irene's wrath, Amtrak announced it is canceling all train service south of Washington D.C. for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Irene is traveling at 12 mph, making it a slow moving storm which will allow it to hover over an area and area to dump rain and batter it with ferocious winds for an expended period. After passing over the Bahamas on Thursday, the storm first fell on the U.S. coast in Florida, where its outermost bands swept in with bursts of wind and rain and a driving riptide. The exodus from the Outer Banks began early Thursday after an evacuation order Wednesday night. Traffic on Route 168 crawled as lines of sport-utility vehicles with surfboards and fishing rods mounted on their roofs headed north from the barrier islands. \u201cMy aunt and uncle are used to storms, but they got a bit worried about this one,\u201d said Melissa Wallace of St. Louis, who had been vacationing at their Cape Hatteras beach house. \u201cWe just thought better safe than sorry.\u201d In the Washington region, there were warnings that people should be prepared for power outages as toppling trees take down electrical lines. Road crews were on alert to clear fallen trees and other wind-driven debris from highways. More than 2,000 sandbags were being placed at Metro stations where water tends to come up over the curbs and flow down escalators. Metro crews also checked drains in tunnels, and some vehicles assigned to Metro supervisors were being equipped with chain saws to keep the transit system moving. The District and Alexandria offered free sandbags to residents. O\u2019Malley said the mandatory evacuation of Ocean City underscored the seriousness of the storm. \u201cThis is not a time to get out the camera and sit on the beach and take pictures of the waves,\u201d he said. Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) authorized local officials to issue mandatory evacuation orders. \u201cI reserve the right to direct and compel evacuation from the same and different areas and determine a different timetable both where local governing bodies have made such a determination and where local governing bodies have not made such a determination,\u201d McDonnell said in a statement. Pepco urged customers who need power for critical medical equipment to review emergency plans and be prepared for extended power outages. Dominion Virginia Power and BGE said repair crews were preparing for emergency restoration work over the next several days. Extra crews from other states were headed to the region to assist with recovery. \u201cThis storm has serious potential to cause widespread damage,\u201d said Rodney Blevins, Dominion\u2019s vice president. \u201cWe are geared up to handle any situation as quickly and safely as possible. We are treating Hurricane Irene seriously, and we urge our customers to monitor local weather forecasts for changing conditions in order to remain safe.\u201d Staff writers Shyamantha Asokan, Dana Hedgpeth, Jenna Johnson, Anita Kumar, Michael E. Ruane and John Wagner contributed to this report. Hurricane Irene is forecast to turn north into the U.S. on a path similar to 1985\u2019s Hurricane Gloria, threatening as much as $13.9 billion in insured losses and possibly forcing the evacuation of parts of New York City, officials and forecasters said. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said a decision on evacuations would be made tomorrow for residents in areas including Coney Island, Battery Park City and parts of Staten Island. Irene, a Category 3 major hurricane, is expected to grow larger as it moves toward North Carolina\u2019s Outer Banks this weekend before crashing into the Northeast as early as Aug. 28, according to the National Hurricane Center track projection. The storm is 105 miles (169 kilometers) east-northeast of Nassau, the Bahamas. \u201cThis track is eerily similar to Gloria,\u201d said Chris Hyde, a meteorologist with MDA EarthSat Weather in Gaithersburg, Maryland. \u201cMillions are potentially going to be losing power from North Carolina all the way up to New England.\u201d Irene may cause $13.9 billion in insured losses and $20 billion in overall economic losses due to lost hours at work, power outages, interruption of shipping and airline traffic, according to estimates by Kinetic Analysis Corp. Gloria killed 11 people, the hurricane center said. It caused $900 million in damage, said Weather Underground Inc. Population Threat More than 65 million people, or about one in five Americans, from North Carolina to Maine, are in the way of the hurricane, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. Mayor Bloomberg said at a press conference the city is expecting \u201cwinds of 60 mph or more\u201d and the storm may be \u201cpossibly as strong as a Category 2 on Long Island.\u201d The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie declared an emergency there and urged people to leave the shore by midday tomorrow. North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue declared a state of emergency for counties east of Interstate 95. A Category 2 storm has winds of at least 96 mph, and poorly constructed homes are at risk for losing their roofs, high-rise windows can be broken and many shallow-rooted trees will be snapped off or pulled from the ground, according to the National Hurricane Center. \u201cNo matter which way you slice it, there\u2019s probably going to be hurricane-force winds in New York,\u201d said Eric Wilhelm, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania. Forecast Track Small fluctuations in the track, which currently passes directly over Queens, could mean much greater damage to the city from storm surge, Wilhelm said. Irene is expected to strengthen later today, the hurricane center said, and could become a Category 4 storm on the five- step Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale, bearing winds of at least 131 mph. \u201cThe hurricane will affect millions and cost billions,\u201d Wilhelm said. \u201cThis will be remembered as a Northeast hurricane and not a North Carolina hurricane.\u201d A hurricane watch is in force from Surf City, North Carolina, to the Virginia line, according to the center. A tropical storm watch is in effect from Edisto Beach, South Carolina, to Surf City. A watch means storm conditions are likely to begin in two days. Governor\u2019s Warning North Carolina\u2019s Perdue told reporters today she was \u201cdismayed that many of the ferries were still empty\u201d at Ocracoke Island, which is evacuating tourists. \u201cWe are asking people all over eastern North Carolina to take this storm very seriously,\u201d she said. The U.S. Navy moved 64 ships away from Norfolk, Virginia, to keep them from being damaged by the storm, the Associated Press reported. The dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial on the National Mall in Washington on Aug. 28, at which President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak, is still on schedule. Residents along the coast north of the Carolinas will \u201cexperience a raging hurricane,\u201d said Jim Dale, a risk meteorologist with High Wycombe, England-based British Weather Services. \u201cThey will see 70-100 miles-per-hour winds and also copious amounts of rain. Flooding and storm damage from wind is inevitable.\u201d Bahamas Impact Irene is ripping through the Bahamas with winds of 115 miles per hour, damaging homes, felling trees and triggering flooding, according to the Bahamas Emergency Management Agency. The U.S. center warned the Bahamas would experience storm surges of as much as 11 feet above sea level and that up to 12 inches of rain may fall. Irene\u2019s hurricane-strength winds of at least 74 mph extend 70 miles from its core, and tropical-storm- strength winds reach out 290 miles. The last hurricane to strike the U.S. was Ike in 2008, a Category 2 storm when it went ashore near Galveston, Texas. The most recent major hurricane, one with winds of at least 111 mph, was Wilma in 2005. Farther east in the Atlantic, Tropical Depression 10 probably will be upgraded to a tropical storm today, the center said. The next tropical storm will be named Jose. The system is about 505 miles west of the southernmost Cape Verde Islands and moving west-northwest across open waters at 12 mph, the Miami-based center said. To contact the reporter on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bill Banker at bbanker@bloomberg.net As massive Hurricane Irene advanced toward the Eastern Seaboard with 115-mph winds, officials issued a hurricane warning for the entire North Carolina coast to the Virginia border, New York ordered low-lying hospitals and nursing homes to evacuate, and at least seven states declared emergencies.If Irene follows its current projected path, it will make landfall along North Carolina's Outer Banks on Saturday. The Category 3 storm withdrew from the Bahamas late Thursday, traveling north at 14 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.Although North Carolina will take the first blow, \"The rest of the Eastern Seaboard is well within the path of this storm,\" National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read said.North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Delaware and Connecticut declared states of emergency.\"This could be a 100-year event,\" New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said.runtime:topic id=\"PLGEO100100804000000\">New York City officials said they might have to suspend all mass transit beginning Saturday.In addition to ordering nursing homes and hospitals in low-lying coastal areas to evacuate ahead of possible flooding, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg advised residents to stay out of parks.\"Because of the high winds that will accompany the storm, we are also urging all New Yorkers, for their own safety, to stay out of parks, where the high winds will increase the danger of downed trees and limbs,\" Bloomberg said. \"And incidentally, it's a good idea to stay out of your own backyard if you have trees there.\"Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial postponed it indefinitely.The hurricane center warned of tidal surges 5 to 10 feet high in North Carolina, accompanied by \"destructive and life-threatening waves.\" Projections show Irene making landfall between Morehead City, N.C., and Cape Hatteras before pushing north. Irene could inundate the state's coastal areas with 6 to 10 inches of rain, and up to 15 inches in some locations, forecasters said.More than 50 million people live in the projected path of the storm. Some forecasters have said Irene has an outside chance of growing into a Category 4 storm, with sustained winds topping 130 mph. But current forecasts predict it will diminish to Category 2 after pummeling North Carolina, with sustained winds up to 110 mph as it plows into Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue declared an emergency in all counties east of Interstate 95, about a quarter of the state, and officials set up emergency shelters inland. President Obama declared North Carolina an emergency too, expediting federal help.The Federal Emergency Management Agency established a depot for food, water, generators, baby formula and other emergency supplies at Ft. Bragg, N.C., as well as at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey and Westover Air Reserve Base in Massachusetts.Cars loaded with coolers and surfboards fled the Outer Banks on Thursday, as people heeded orders to leave the exposed barrier islands. Tourists' vehicles clogged the main highway north to Virginia, and traffic on roads leading inland grew heavier as the day wore on.Up to 200,000 tourists and residents are affected by evacuation orders in North Carolina alone, with states to the north rushing to prepare their own evacuation plans. Forecasters said Irene was so big and powerful that severe road flooding and widespread electrical outages were likely, especially in the Northeast, where the ground is saturated from recent rains.\"This is a very dangerous storm,\" said Dorothy Toolan of the Dare County Emergency Management office in Manteo, N.C., across the Roanoke Sound from Nags Head . \"People really need to take this seriously.\"Irene would be the first hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland since Ike devastated the Texas coast in 2008.Facing a two-hour delay on the highway north to their home in Virginia, sisters Susan Wright and Beth Edwards decided to stick around and enjoy a final day in the sun and sand in Nags Head \u2014 complete with mimosa cocktails. They had planned a weeklong vacation with their husbands and other friends and family at a $4,000-a-week beach house, only to be hit with a mandatory evacuation order.", "source": "news_summ", "evaluation": "rouge"}
{"instructions": ["Please summarize these news articles."], "outputs": ["\u2013 Frightened North Carolinians fleeing Irene are jamming highways as the East Coast steels for what could be the biggest hurricane in decades. At least seven states have now declared a state of emergency, and hundreds of flights are being canceled. Gas stations are running out of fuel and ATMs have been emptied of cash as Americans hit the road for a bumper-to-bumper trip out of Irene's angry path. The Category 3 storm is expected to hit the Southeast sometime tomorrow, and hundreds of thousands of residents have been ordered out of their homes in three North Carolina counties. Norfolk, Va., is also ordering residents to evacuate, and Washington, DC, has been forced to postpone Sunday's planned MLK Memorial dedication. \"This is a very, very serious situation,\" a spokeswoman for Dare County told ABC News. \"We have not seen anything like this in the lifetimes of most our residents. Once the storm hits, it will be very difficult to respond to distress calls.\" Irene is some 700 miles wide now and moving at a slow 12mph, which means it can wreak extensive damage in a region over a long period of time; it could cause up to $13.9 billion in damage on the East Coast. The storm is expected to barrel into New York City on Sunday, packing winds of up to 90mph. New Jersey communities are already being evacuated, and hundreds of street fairs have been canceled and elder care facilities and hospitals in low-lying area will be evacuated in New York today. NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg says residents in low-lying parts of the city should get out today as the transit system is planned to be shut down tomorrow."], "input": "As Hurricane Irene swung north Thursday, putting the Washington region in its sights, Maryland and Virginia declared a state of emergency and Sunday\u2019s dedication of the memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was postponed. Organizers said the event will be rescheduled for September or October. The memorial, the first on the Mall honoring an African American, has been a quarter-century in the making, but safety trumped ceremony. Hurricane Irene was forecast to sweep over the Outer Banks of North Carolina overnight Friday and advance into the Washington area with a vanguard of showers beginning Saturday afternoon. Early Friday morning, the National Weather Service upgraded the Tropical Storm Watch issued for much of the D.C. area to a Tropical Storm Warning. Meanwhile, Irene weakened slightly to a Category 2 storm as it approached the East Coast, where a hurricane warning was also extended to New Jersey. If the hurricane stays on track, the worst of Irene will arrive in Virginia, Maryland and the District later Saturday and into Sunday morning. Late-summer vacationers evacuated Atlantic coast beaches, which are expected to be hit hardest before the storm wallops New England. The intensity of the storm and the shift in the forecast track farther to the west prompted the decision to delay the memorial dedication, said Harry E. Johnson Sr., chief executive of the memorial project foundation. \u201cI\u2019m disappointed and hurt, really,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cBut the memorial is going to be there forever.\u201d Johnson said the change might allow those who planned to travel to stay home and for those in Washington to leave ahead of the storm. Governors along the coast, including those in Virginia and Maryland, declared states of emergency Thursday, and thousands of weekend events were canceled. \u201cThis is a large, this is a deadly, this is a slow-moving hurricane that is bearing down on the state of Maryland,\u201d Maryland Gov. Martin O\u2019Malley (D) said in declaring an emergency. \u201cThere will no doubt be a lot of flooding. Citizens should anticipate long periods of electrical outages.\u201d A significant storm surge is expected to flood coastal areas, and wind-driven flooding may occur along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. The worst of the weather is likely to be east of the Interstate 95 corridor, which may get four to six inches of rain, prolonged winds of 50 to 70 mph, and gusts of 90 to 100 mph, according to meteorologists with The Washington Post\u2019s Capital Weather Gang. Amtrak canceled train departures from Southeastern states and curtailed some service in the Northeast. Airports said they expected flight delays and cancellations through the weekend, with many airlines allowing fliers to change their plans without penalty. An endless stream of vacationers rolled across the bridge out of Ocean City, on Thursday evening, and homeowners rushed in the opposite direction to board up their rental properties. Ocean City was one of many resort areas where evacuation was mandatory. Colleges on the verge of opening for the fall semester warned students to delay their arrival, and the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg told its students to go home. Three other schools \u2014 the University of Maryland, George Washington University and Catholic University \u2014 said they would open their dormitories a day early, on Friday, so that students could get settled before the storm hit. George Mason University said it would implement a flexible move-in schedule. In New York, the Associated Press reported that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) said officials expect to shut down the city\u2019s transit system Saturday afternoon ahead of the hurricane, which is forecast to strike eastern Queens. After passing over the Bahamas on Thursday, the storm first fell on the U.S. coast in Florida, where its outermost bands swept in with bursts of wind and rain and a driving riptide. The exodus from the Outer Banks began early Thursday after an evacuation order Wednesday night. Traffic on Route 168 crawled as lines of sport-utility vehicles with surfboards and fishing rods mounted on their roofs headed north from the barrier islands. \u201cMy aunt and uncle are used to storms, but they got a bit worried about this one,\u201d said Melissa Wallace of St. Louis, who had been vacationing at their Cape Hatteras beach house. \u201cWe just thought better safe than sorry.\u201d In the Washington region, there were warnings that people should be prepared for power outages as toppling trees take down electrical lines. Road crews were on alert to clear fallen trees and other wind-driven debris from highways. More than 2,000 sandbags were being placed at Metro stations where water tends to come up over the curbs and flow down escalators. Metro crews also checked drains in tunnels, and some vehicles assigned to Metro supervisors were being equipped with chain saws to keep the transit system moving. The District and Alexandria offered free sandbags to residents. O\u2019Malley said the mandatory evacuation of Ocean City underscored the seriousness of the storm. \u201cThis is not a time to get out the camera and sit on the beach and take pictures of the waves,\u201d he said. Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) authorized local officials to issue mandatory evacuation orders. \u201cI reserve the right to direct and compel evacuation from the same and different areas and determine a different timetable both where local governing bodies have made such a determination and where local governing bodies have not made such a determination,\u201d McDonnell said in a statement. Pepco urged customers who need power for critical medical equipment to review emergency plans and be prepared for extended power outages. Dominion Virginia Power and BGE said repair crews were preparing for emergency restoration work over the next several days. Extra crews from other states were headed to the region to assist with recovery. \u201cThis storm has serious potential to cause widespread damage,\u201d said Rodney Blevins, Dominion\u2019s vice president. \u201cWe are geared up to handle any situation as quickly and safely as possible. We are treating Hurricane Irene seriously, and we urge our customers to monitor local weather forecasts for changing conditions in order to remain safe.\u201d Staff writers Shyamantha Asokan, Dana Hedgpeth, Jenna Johnson, Anita Kumar, Michael E. Ruane and John Wagner contributed to this report. NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City residents who live in low-lying areas should start moving out on Friday, before Hurricane Irene is expected to hit, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Thursday. Otherwise, they risk getting stuck because the mass transit system that millions of New Yorkers rely on might have to be shut down on Saturday, he told reporters. (Reporting by Joan Gralla; Editing by Jan Paschal) The exodus from the North Carolina coast has begun and tonight it is a slow motion, bumper to bumper march inland as tens of thousands heed warnings to get out of the way of Hurricane Irene. Gas stations are running out, ATM's are out of cash and one woman was out of a very special night. Melissa Cook was supposed to get married this weekend. \"The TV showed the mandatory evacuation and I burst into tears,\" Cook said. \"Everything I had planned and dreamed about.\" Hurricane Irene's wave of disappointment also affected beach goers in South Carolina. Police closed the beaches to swimming after six swimmers were rescued from rip currents caused by the massive storm. As Irene -- a Category 3 hurricane with 115 mph winds -- blasted through the Bahamas, the U.S. began bracing for the storm's worst. To See Irene's Expected Path Over East Coast, Click Here Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, under President Obama's direction, contacted East Coast mayors and governors potentially in Irene's path. Later, she and FEMA director Craig Fugate later held a conference call with state, local, and tribal officials on planning for the storm. \"Given the unpredictability of these storms, we are currently planning for several scenarios, including potential impacts to major metro areas and critical infrastructure,\" Napolitano said in a Department of Homeland Security news release. Evacuation orders were issued along the coast of North Carolina today in Dare, Currituck and Cateret counties. There are 180,000 people just in Dare County and another 150,000 people were told to get out of Ocean City, Md. \"This is a very, very serious situation,\" said Dorothy Toolan, public information officer for Dare County, N.C. \"We have not seen anything like this in the lifetimes of most our residents...Once the storm hits it will be very difficult to respond to distress calls.\" Not everyone was heading out of town. The parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Moorehead City in Cateret County was filled with people stocking up on supplies to ride out the storm. \"I've lived through hurricanes all my life, and I've only run from one,\" said a man who identified himself simply as George. \"Unless it's a (category) 4 or 5 coming straight at me, I'm not leaving.\" \"I'm going to sit at home, watch television and play on my computer. I'm not worried about this thing,\" George said. In Florida, at least 8 people were hurt after a wave knocked them over on the jerry they were on off Boynton Beach Inlet, The Associated Press reported. Others were taking no chances. A state of emergency was declared in Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg said police are deploying more than 80 boats around the city as well as several helicopters to prepare for emergencies. City hospitals have tested their emergency generators, and the city's airports are stockpiling diapers, cots, blankets, pillow and bottles of water. Fearing Irene's wrath, Amtrak announced it is canceling all train service south of Washington D.C. for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Irene is traveling at 12 mph, making it a slow moving storm which will allow it to hover over an area and area to dump rain and batter it with ferocious winds for an expended period. After passing over the Bahamas on Thursday, the storm first fell on the U.S. coast in Florida, where its outermost bands swept in with bursts of wind and rain and a driving riptide. The exodus from the Outer Banks began early Thursday after an evacuation order Wednesday night. Traffic on Route 168 crawled as lines of sport-utility vehicles with surfboards and fishing rods mounted on their roofs headed north from the barrier islands. \u201cMy aunt and uncle are used to storms, but they got a bit worried about this one,\u201d said Melissa Wallace of St. Louis, who had been vacationing at their Cape Hatteras beach house. \u201cWe just thought better safe than sorry.\u201d In the Washington region, there were warnings that people should be prepared for power outages as toppling trees take down electrical lines. Road crews were on alert to clear fallen trees and other wind-driven debris from highways. More than 2,000 sandbags were being placed at Metro stations where water tends to come up over the curbs and flow down escalators. Metro crews also checked drains in tunnels, and some vehicles assigned to Metro supervisors were being equipped with chain saws to keep the transit system moving. The District and Alexandria offered free sandbags to residents. O\u2019Malley said the mandatory evacuation of Ocean City underscored the seriousness of the storm. \u201cThis is not a time to get out the camera and sit on the beach and take pictures of the waves,\u201d he said. Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) authorized local officials to issue mandatory evacuation orders. \u201cI reserve the right to direct and compel evacuation from the same and different areas and determine a different timetable both where local governing bodies have made such a determination and where local governing bodies have not made such a determination,\u201d McDonnell said in a statement. Pepco urged customers who need power for critical medical equipment to review emergency plans and be prepared for extended power outages. Dominion Virginia Power and BGE said repair crews were preparing for emergency restoration work over the next several days. Extra crews from other states were headed to the region to assist with recovery. \u201cThis storm has serious potential to cause widespread damage,\u201d said Rodney Blevins, Dominion\u2019s vice president. \u201cWe are geared up to handle any situation as quickly and safely as possible. We are treating Hurricane Irene seriously, and we urge our customers to monitor local weather forecasts for changing conditions in order to remain safe.\u201d Staff writers Shyamantha Asokan, Dana Hedgpeth, Jenna Johnson, Anita Kumar, Michael E. Ruane and John Wagner contributed to this report. Hurricane Irene is forecast to turn north into the U.S. on a path similar to 1985\u2019s Hurricane Gloria, threatening as much as $13.9 billion in insured losses and possibly forcing the evacuation of parts of New York City, officials and forecasters said. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said a decision on evacuations would be made tomorrow for residents in areas including Coney Island, Battery Park City and parts of Staten Island. Irene, a Category 3 major hurricane, is expected to grow larger as it moves toward North Carolina\u2019s Outer Banks this weekend before crashing into the Northeast as early as Aug. 28, according to the National Hurricane Center track projection. The storm is 105 miles (169 kilometers) east-northeast of Nassau, the Bahamas. \u201cThis track is eerily similar to Gloria,\u201d said Chris Hyde, a meteorologist with MDA EarthSat Weather in Gaithersburg, Maryland. \u201cMillions are potentially going to be losing power from North Carolina all the way up to New England.\u201d Irene may cause $13.9 billion in insured losses and $20 billion in overall economic losses due to lost hours at work, power outages, interruption of shipping and airline traffic, according to estimates by Kinetic Analysis Corp. Gloria killed 11 people, the hurricane center said. It caused $900 million in damage, said Weather Underground Inc. Population Threat More than 65 million people, or about one in five Americans, from North Carolina to Maine, are in the way of the hurricane, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. Mayor Bloomberg said at a press conference the city is expecting \u201cwinds of 60 mph or more\u201d and the storm may be \u201cpossibly as strong as a Category 2 on Long Island.\u201d The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie declared an emergency there and urged people to leave the shore by midday tomorrow. North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue declared a state of emergency for counties east of Interstate 95. A Category 2 storm has winds of at least 96 mph, and poorly constructed homes are at risk for losing their roofs, high-rise windows can be broken and many shallow-rooted trees will be snapped off or pulled from the ground, according to the National Hurricane Center. \u201cNo matter which way you slice it, there\u2019s probably going to be hurricane-force winds in New York,\u201d said Eric Wilhelm, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania. Forecast Track Small fluctuations in the track, which currently passes directly over Queens, could mean much greater damage to the city from storm surge, Wilhelm said. Irene is expected to strengthen later today, the hurricane center said, and could become a Category 4 storm on the five- step Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale, bearing winds of at least 131 mph. \u201cThe hurricane will affect millions and cost billions,\u201d Wilhelm said. \u201cThis will be remembered as a Northeast hurricane and not a North Carolina hurricane.\u201d A hurricane watch is in force from Surf City, North Carolina, to the Virginia line, according to the center. A tropical storm watch is in effect from Edisto Beach, South Carolina, to Surf City. A watch means storm conditions are likely to begin in two days. Governor\u2019s Warning North Carolina\u2019s Perdue told reporters today she was \u201cdismayed that many of the ferries were still empty\u201d at Ocracoke Island, which is evacuating tourists. \u201cWe are asking people all over eastern North Carolina to take this storm very seriously,\u201d she said. The U.S. Navy moved 64 ships away from Norfolk, Virginia, to keep them from being damaged by the storm, the Associated Press reported. The dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial on the National Mall in Washington on Aug. 28, at which President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak, is still on schedule. Residents along the coast north of the Carolinas will \u201cexperience a raging hurricane,\u201d said Jim Dale, a risk meteorologist with High Wycombe, England-based British Weather Services. \u201cThey will see 70-100 miles-per-hour winds and also copious amounts of rain. Flooding and storm damage from wind is inevitable.\u201d Bahamas Impact Irene is ripping through the Bahamas with winds of 115 miles per hour, damaging homes, felling trees and triggering flooding, according to the Bahamas Emergency Management Agency. The U.S. center warned the Bahamas would experience storm surges of as much as 11 feet above sea level and that up to 12 inches of rain may fall. Irene\u2019s hurricane-strength winds of at least 74 mph extend 70 miles from its core, and tropical-storm- strength winds reach out 290 miles. The last hurricane to strike the U.S. was Ike in 2008, a Category 2 storm when it went ashore near Galveston, Texas. The most recent major hurricane, one with winds of at least 111 mph, was Wilma in 2005. Farther east in the Atlantic, Tropical Depression 10 probably will be upgraded to a tropical storm today, the center said. The next tropical storm will be named Jose. The system is about 505 miles west of the southernmost Cape Verde Islands and moving west-northwest across open waters at 12 mph, the Miami-based center said. To contact the reporter on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bill Banker at bbanker@bloomberg.net As massive Hurricane Irene advanced toward the Eastern Seaboard with 115-mph winds, officials issued a hurricane warning for the entire North Carolina coast to the Virginia border, New York ordered low-lying hospitals and nursing homes to evacuate, and at least seven states declared emergencies.If Irene follows its current projected path, it will make landfall along North Carolina's Outer Banks on Saturday. The Category 3 storm withdrew from the Bahamas late Thursday, traveling north at 14 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.Although North Carolina will take the first blow, \"The rest of the Eastern Seaboard is well within the path of this storm,\" National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read said.North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Delaware and Connecticut declared states of emergency.\"This could be a 100-year event,\" New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said.runtime:topic id=\"PLGEO100100804000000\">New York City officials said they might have to suspend all mass transit beginning Saturday.In addition to ordering nursing homes and hospitals in low-lying coastal areas to evacuate ahead of possible flooding, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg advised residents to stay out of parks.\"Because of the high winds that will accompany the storm, we are also urging all New Yorkers, for their own safety, to stay out of parks, where the high winds will increase the danger of downed trees and limbs,\" Bloomberg said. \"And incidentally, it's a good idea to stay out of your own backyard if you have trees there.\"Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial postponed it indefinitely.The hurricane center warned of tidal surges 5 to 10 feet high in North Carolina, accompanied by \"destructive and life-threatening waves.\" Projections show Irene making landfall between Morehead City, N.C., and Cape Hatteras before pushing north. Irene could inundate the state's coastal areas with 6 to 10 inches of rain, and up to 15 inches in some locations, forecasters said.More than 50 million people live in the projected path of the storm. Some forecasters have said Irene has an outside chance of growing into a Category 4 storm, with sustained winds topping 130 mph. But current forecasts predict it will diminish to Category 2 after pummeling North Carolina, with sustained winds up to 110 mph as it plows into Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue declared an emergency in all counties east of Interstate 95, about a quarter of the state, and officials set up emergency shelters inland. President Obama declared North Carolina an emergency too, expediting federal help.The Federal Emergency Management Agency established a depot for food, water, generators, baby formula and other emergency supplies at Ft. Bragg, N.C., as well as at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey and Westover Air Reserve Base in Massachusetts.Cars loaded with coolers and surfboards fled the Outer Banks on Thursday, as people heeded orders to leave the exposed barrier islands. Tourists' vehicles clogged the main highway north to Virginia, and traffic on roads leading inland grew heavier as the day wore on.Up to 200,000 tourists and residents are affected by evacuation orders in North Carolina alone, with states to the north rushing to prepare their own evacuation plans. Forecasters said Irene was so big and powerful that severe road flooding and widespread electrical outages were likely, especially in the Northeast, where the ground is saturated from recent rains.\"This is a very dangerous storm,\" said Dorothy Toolan of the Dare County Emergency Management office in Manteo, N.C., across the Roanoke Sound from Nags Head . \"People really need to take this seriously.\"Irene would be the first hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland since Ike devastated the Texas coast in 2008.Facing a two-hour delay on the highway north to their home in Virginia, sisters Susan Wright and Beth Edwards decided to stick around and enjoy a final day in the sun and sand in Nags Head \u2014 complete with mimosa cocktails. They had planned a weeklong vacation with their husbands and other friends and family at a $4,000-a-week beach house, only to be hit with a mandatory evacuation order.", "source": "news_summ", "evaluation": "LLM"}
